Internet reliability – Bigleaf Networks

The 411 on 4G LTE and 5G: What you really need to know for your business

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 15:48:10 +0000

From the early days of basic cellular communication to the advanced capabilities of today’s high-speed data networks, mobile connectivity has played an ever-increasing, and pivotal, role in how businesses communicate.

4G, 5G and LTE – which is right for your business?

As businesses continue to require faster, more reliable connectivity, understanding the key players in mobile network technology – 4G LTE & 5G – becomes fundamental:

4G, short for “fourth generation,” marked a revolutionary leap in mobile connectivity. Unprecedented data speeds, faster downloads, smoother streaming, and enhanced overall performance became the rule rather than the exception.

5G, or the “fifth generation” of mobile networks, emerged with promises of unparalleled speed, reduced latency, and massive device connectivity. Businesses embracing 5G anticipate transformative changes, from enhanced IoT capabilities to innovative applications that redefine industry standards.

LTE, or Long-Term Evolution, serves as a crucial stepping stone in the mobile network evolution. Often used as an umbrella term encompassing various generations, LTE provides high-speed wireless communication while acting as the foundation for both 4G and, in some cases, 5G. LTE’s role in delivering consistent, high-quality connectivity has been instrumental in shaping the digital landscape.

Speed, coverage, and reliability

In general, 4G LTE delivers speeds ranging from 5 to 100 Mbps while 5G offers speeds of up to 20 Gbps, noting that Gbps is 1,000 x faster than Mbps.

In terms of coverage, 4G and 4G LTE are going to still have slightly wider coverage than 5G, but ultimately 5G is expected to become more ubiquitous, reaching even the most remote and rural areas.

In terms of coverage, as of 2024 4G LTE has slightly wider coverage than 5G, but ultimately 5G is expected to become more ubiquitous, reaching even the most remote and rural areas.

When it comes to reliability, 4G LTE provides generally reliable connectivity for everyday business operations. It was first commercially deployed in 2009. The technology has since become widespread, offering faster speeds and improved connectivity compared to previous network technology. Over the years, 4G LTE has evolved with various enhancements, leading to better performance and coverage. As of now, it’s been available for over a decade and continues to be a dominant mobile network technology while the transition to 5G is underway.

5G boasts enhanced reliability and was designed to handle many connected devices simultaneously via advanced technologies like beamforming and network slicing to ensure a more robust and dependable connection.

How each technology suits business needs

For businesses operating in urban and suburban areas with moderate data needs, 4G LTE is well suited for applications such as video conferencing, cloud-based services, and routine data transfers.

Of course, LTE serves as a more versatile option for various industries, including retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, in ensuring consistent connectivity and improving the overall experience.

For businesses with high data demands, particularly those involved in emerging technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, or industries requiring real-time data transmission, such as healthcare and autonomous vehicles, 5G is the preferred technology.

When considering mobile data, we typically look at three main factors: cost, coverage, and complexity.

The first two of these factors are very straightforward. Cost refers to how affordable the available technology is for your budget, while coverage is about the availability of that technology in your area.

Complexity is a bit trickier. 4G LTE technology is known for being compatible with almost any existing infrastructure, making it unlikely to run into compatibility issues. It fits well with most standard network architectures, which makes integrating it relatively simple.

However, integrating 5G technology might be more complex depending on the type of 5G technology being used. For instance, 5G mid-band or C-band technology is easy to deploy and is expected to become as common soon as 4G LTE is today. However, 5G millimeter wave technology might be harder to deploy and could be limited to specific use cases because of its complexity. This means that existing devices and systems might need upgrades to take full advantage of 5G, which adds to the complexity of integrating it.

Additionally, this almost always includes interfacing with an additional vender or service provider.

Enter Bigleaf Wireless Connect

Bigleaf Wireless Connect provides 5G cellular connectivity delivered through a dual-SIM router; Wireless Connect can be added to any Bigleaf service plan to work with your primary connection to provide business continuity. Bigleaf makes it easy to help businesses mitigate outages and optimize network connectivity with Wireless Connect.

Both 20 GB and 100 GB plans are available. The 20 GB is designed for failover, allowing you to take advantage of Bigleaf’s often-replicated-but-never-duplicated same-IP address failover, ensuring sensitive session-based calls, like VoIP and video conferences stay online even during internet outages. The 100 GB plan can be set for backup failover, or it can be set to load balance specific traffic classes to increase application reliability and performance.

Bigleaf Wireless Connect ensures single-vendor billing directly with Bigleaf, avoids data plan overage fees, simplifies the complexity of contract and billing management from multiple vendors, and eliminates the hassle of dealing with unconnected support teams.

Learn more about Bigleaf Wireless Connect and what it can do for your business today!

Allstate Peterbilt & Bigleaf: Ensuring uninterrupted operations across the Midwest

Amy Chan — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 20:58:02 +0000

Allstate Peterbilt Group, the largest privately held heavy truck dealership group in the upper Midwest, with 26 locations across the region, exemplifies the critical significance of network reliability in today’s business environment. With a steadfast commitment to providing exceptional sales, parts, and service to their home and business customers, Allstate Peterbilt’s workforce relies on seamless connectivity to ensure uninterrupted operations.

Network Connectivity: The Backbone of Operational Excellence

For Allstate Peterbilt, reliable connectivity is the lifeblood of their business operations. Their entire business model, including point-of-sale, inventory management, and service ticketing systems, is hosted in the cloud, making a stable internet connection a critical necessity.

Furthermore, with a significant portion of their parts sales occurring over the phone, any disruption in connectivity can severely impact their ability to effectively serve customers.

Allstate Peterbilt relies on Bigleaf to support the core of their business operations:

Overcoming Connectivity Challenges in Rural Areas

Allstate Peterbilt’s widespread presence across the Midwest, including rural areas with limited internet service provider (ISP) options, presented significant connectivity challenges. Many of their locations, particularly in the Dakotas, could only access a single reliable internet circuit, leaving them vulnerable to frequent outages and downtime.

This not only impacted their ability to conduct business but also created frustrating situations where ISPs would often point the blame back at them, leaving Allstate Peterbilt’s IT team to navigate the complexity of resolving issues that may or may not have been within their actual power to solve.

Bigleaf: A Game Changing Solution for Network Reliability

Through their longtime partners at Fostar, Inc., Allstate Peterbilt discovered Bigleaf, and that’s when their connectivity challenges began getting addressed with remarkable efficacy. By leveraging Bigleaf’s intelligent SD-WAN solution, Allstate Peterbilt gained the ability to seamlessly combine multiple internet circuits, including fiber, cable, and cellular connections, providing redundancy and failover capabilities. The change was like night and day.

With Bigleaf, we can have multiple Internet circuits at every location. Some have more than two, but at least two, and I don’t have to worry about our internet going down anymore. It's been awesome.

Ryan Wuotila

Director of IT at Allstate Peterbilt

Simplicity and Proactive Monitoring: Key Advantages

One of the key advantages Allstate Peterbilt experienced with Bigleaf is its simplicity and proactive monitoring capabilities. Wuotila praised the ease of setup and management, “I didn’t even have to go to the sites. I could call and walk them [my team] through it. So that’s how easy it was when I have part-Sales guys that can do it.”

The Bigleaf Web Dashboard now plays a pivotal role in Allstate Peterbilt’s proactive approach to network management. Wuotila explained, “I usually have the Web Dashboard open and when I see a site highlighted yellow, I can click on it. It’ll show me one circuit’s down but our users don’t even know yet because your same-IP failover has already rerouted the traffic to another circuit. That lets me call it in and get that repaired without the end user even noticing there was a problem. I also get quick alert notifications any time a site is having any issue. That’s a huge plus.”

Wireless Connectivity: Enhancing Reliability in Underserved Areas

To further bolster their network reliability, especially in areas with limited connectivity options, Allstate Peterbilt has leveraged Verizon cellular circuits for backup. Bigleaf allows them to do this easily and allows for a cost-effective and flexible backup option, ensuring uninterrupted operations even in the most remote locations.

“It’s absolutely crucial for us to have different flavors of connectivity because we can’t always get a hardline connection,” Wuotila explained. “We have such eclectic locations, from metro areas with millions of people to places that barely have a post office. To have another tool for backup is really great.”

Bigleaf Wireless Connect

Bigleaf Wireless Connect offers the convenience of adding wireless connectivity to your Bigleaf service, providing a reliable, single-vendor solution for uninterrupted business operations.

Transforming Business Operations with Bigleaf

Bigleaf enabled Allstate Peterbilt to transform their business operations, achieving unparalleled network reliability and continuity. With outages reduced to a minimum, Allstate Peterbilt can now focus on delivering exceptional service to their customers, secure in the knowledge that their network infrastructure is resilient and adaptable.

Wuotila summed up the impact of Bigleaf, “As soon as you install a circuit, it’s displaying in the Web Dashboard within minutes. You can see each circuit up, your speed, how much bandwidth is being used at that moment.”

Unlock the Potential of Bigleaf

Elevate your business operations and achieve unparalleled network reliability with Bigleaf. Leverage intelligent SD-WAN solutions, proactive monitoring, and flexible connectivity options to ensure uninterrupted operations, even in the most challenging environments.

Contact Bigleaf today to learn how their innovative solutions can transform your network infrastructure.

Main Challenges

Limited internet availability
Constant outages
and downtime
Different ISPs at multiple locations
Unresponsive ISPs
and waiting games

Bigleaf Delivers

Aggregating multiple ISP connections
Easy and intuitive setup process
“Single pane of glass” view for all circuits

Final Results

Elimination of service outages
High performing internet, even in rural and limited-service areas
Issue resolution with no user impact

Empowering small businesses with reliable connectivity solutions

Tabby Worthington — Fri, 03 May 2024 13:16:00 +0000

Every day is an opportunity for small businesses to grow and succeed. At Bigleaf Networks, we provide reliable connectivity solutions that empower small businesses to perform their best, especially during key shopping events like Small Business Saturday.

Why Connectivity Is Crucial for Small Businesses

Reliable internet is foundational for small businesses. It supports efficient customer transactions, continuous online presence, effective communication with customers and suppliers and enables innovation and business expansion.

Our Commitment: Year-Round Reliable Connectivity Solutions

Our services are designed to meet the diverse demands of small businesses: Simplified Plug-and-Play Connectivity:

Quick, hassle-free setup.
Resilient Backup: Constant connectivity with same-IP address failover.
Optimized Traffic: Maximum performance, even during peak usage

How to Enhance Your Business Connectivity

Take these steps to ensure your business remains competitive and connected:

Explore our tailored connectivity bundles on our website.
Consult with a Territory Channel Manager to find the perfect fit for your business.
Set up quickly with our user-friendly solutions and enjoy ongoing support.

Reliable internet is crucial for the success of any small business. Whether you’re preparing for Small Business Saturday or looking to boost your daily operations, Bigleaf Networks is here to ensure your connectivity needs are met all year round.

Ready to upgrade? Contact Bigleaf Networks today and discover how we can help your small business stay connected and competitive.

Enhancing quality of life with Bigleaf’s network optimization solution in senior living communities

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:00:00 +0000

In senior living communities, reliable internet connectivity is not only important to residents’ quality of life but also plays a critical role in their health and safety. Bigleaf works with several organizations who support the needs of aging individuals, from traditional senior care residences to assisted living communities to memory care facilities. For these communities, many with multiple locations across county and state lines, ensuring that reliable connection is a complex task.

Addressing “The Internet Problem” head-on in senior living communities

There are over 30,600 active assisted living facilities in the United States alone and the market is expected to expand at a compound growth rate (CAGR) of 5.53% from 2023-20302. When we started working with one senior care facility, they initially consisted of a couple of communities in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Since then, they’ve added more than 20 new locations. Like most fast-growing organizations they experienced technology challenges, the most glaring centered around what employees and residents referred to as “the internet problem” — the reliability of its in-building Wi-Fi and VoIP phone systems and the impact it had on staff productivity and residents’ quality of life.

Fixing “the Internet problem” has become a fundamental strategic imperative

In a cloud-based system, when the internet goes down, so, too, do the phones. For elderly care communities, that means adult children are unable to call their family members and nurse call systems are rendered inoperable, taxing both staff and residents of each community.

Adding to the challenges, when a company has broadly distributed locations, they rely on different local internet service providers for their cloud-based phone and IT systems; meaning problems can’t conveniently be solved by any single ISP.

When internet problems occur, their IT departments also get hit with a constant stream of internet-related support tickets. Frustratingly, all they can typically do is call their local ISP and hope for a resolution, which doesn’t often come. Rather, they’re given the run around as ISPs try to absolve themselves from blame or responsibility, which leads to frustrated employees and residents.

IT teams tell us, “When the internet is unreliable, people complain. Phones don’t work. Computers slow down. And staff respond by either finding a work around or just ignoring the problem. Then they stop complaining to IT because they assume IT can’t help. They just accept that this is the way it is, which doesn’t allow us to create long-term and reliable solutions.”

Putting network optimization to work for “Mom’s Kitchen Phone”-level reliability

For one of our customers with a lean IT team who manage more than 700 computers across their company’s 38 locations, the IT director ripped out the existing infrastructure and installed new phones and better connectivity. He also introduced redundancy and intelligence into the IT system. The strategy behind this solution was rooted in an unlikely place — his mom’s kitchen phone.

The Kitchen Phone Philosophy is a throwback to the days when the IT director could pick up the phone in his mother’s house and knew it would work every time. He wanted to architect an infrastructure that would give every employee and resident that same sense of predictable performance.

To make the IT system as reliable as his old kitchen phone he needed to redesign the whole system from the ground up by upgrading the Wi-Fi, network, and firewall systems. But he knew that none of that would matter without a reliable internet connection at every location. For that he needed two things:

Redundancy
Something that could make use of the redundancy in real-time without his limited team getting involved.

For redundancy, he added a second circuit to each community location. To manage those circuits, he installed Bigleaf’s network optimization solution at each location. With those two components in place, the communities were equipped with multiple paths to the internet and real-time, bi-directional QoS, load-balancing, and failover to ensure that those paths were used to provide a flawless user experience.

Their network had now become as reliable as Mom’s kitchen phone! And that’s when they began to notice something interesting.

Reaping the business benefits of truly reliable internet connectivity

“Since installing Bigleaf, we don’t get calls about internet problems. We get calls about people thinking that the internet is down. But it always ends up being a computer has lost its Wi-Fi capabilities, or somebody misconfigured something while they were working on something else. The internet just doesn’t go down anymore.”

No longer confined by low expectations, the residents and staff started paying attention to the network again.

“When we would get calls about network problems, we’d ask people about their experience: when was the last time they remembered the Internet going down or where does the WiFi not work in their building. And they’d have a hard time recalling when that was. That was when I knew what we had built with Bigleaf’s network optimization solution was a success — because they started thinking about it again.”

Fixing “the internet problem” has become a fundamental strategic improvement for the company. Shoring up their network meant they now have time to think strategically instead of reactively, as many IT departments are forced to do.

Several IT directors we work with agree, “It allows you to take a proactive approach to technology when you’re not constantly putting out fires. That’s the real value of Bigleaf.”

Since deploying Bigleaf’s network optimization solution we’ve heard from customers that their help desk tickets have dropped an astonishing 30%, even as network usage increased. IT is now seen as a source of solutions and innovations.

More strikingly, this has inadvertently created a competitive advantage for these senior care facilities. The reliability of Wi-Fi and internet connectivity has turned into a key, competitive selling point used to attract new residents and provide comforting assurance to their families that they were all in good hands.

The outcome of the kitchen phone approach, using Bigleaf’s network optimization solution, extends far beyond the network. Staff at senior living facilities can now provide better care for their residents, and their residents experience a better, more connected quality of life.

Ensure internet reliability for all assisted living communities

Enhance the quality of life for residents and staff across various types of long-term care facilities, including assisted living homes, memory care centers, and recovery and rehabilitation facilities.

The Crucial Role of Reliable Internet for eCommerce Platforms

Tabby Worthington — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:08:00 +0000

Connectivity: The Lifeblood of eCommerce

eCommerce has revolutionized the retail landscape, creating a world where everything from the latest gadget to weekly groceries is just a click away. As businesses of all sizes pivot to digital storefronts, the reliance on robust internet connectivity has never been more critical. In this blog, we’ll delve into how Bigleaf Networks ensures you have the most reliable internet for eCommerce platforms to ensure your business is a model of continuity and efficiency.

In the digital marketplace, connectivity reigns supreme. It’s the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity, a satisfied customer and a frustrated shopper. We’ll explore why consistent internet access is not just beneficial but necessary for maintaining the pulse of your eCommerce business.

Top Benefits of Reliable Internet for eCommerce Platforms:

Reduces Website Downtime: Minimizes the risk of losing customers and sales due to site outages.
Speeds Up Load Times: Enhances user experience with faster page loading, which can increase conversion rates.
Supports High Traffic Volumes: Keeps your website running smoothly, even during peak shopping periods.
Improves Customer Satisfaction: Provides a seamless shopping experience that can boost customer loyalty.
Strengthens Security: Ensures secure transactions by maintaining a stable connection for security protocols.
Facilitates Scalability: Allows your eCommerce business to grow without being constrained by connectivity issues.
Optimizes Backend Operations: Improves inventory management, order processing, and other backend functions with consistent online access.
Enables Multichannel Sales: Supports diverse sales channels, from social media to mobile apps, without interruption.
Boosts SEO Rankings: Google favors websites with good user experience indicators, like load speed and availability.
Enhances Data Analytics: Provides uninterrupted data flow for accurate real-time analytics and reporting.

Navigating eCommerce Challenges with Bigleaf

Bigleaf: Your eCommerce Connectivity Partner

Encountering issues like website downtime or slow loading pages can quickly erode customer trust and diminish sales. We’ll dissect these common pain points and show you how Bigleaf’s solutions address them head-on, keeping your digital doors open and business booming with reliable internet for eCommerce platforms.

Whether you’re a small local shop or a sprawling global enterprise, Bigleaf offers network optimization solutions tailored to your unique eCommerce needs. From dynamic QoS for streamlined traffic to same IP failover for constant uptime, Bigleaf is dedicated to keeping your online presence robust and responsive.

Bigleaf’s Unique Features for eCommerce Connectivity:

Dynamic QoS: Prioritizes bandwidth for critical traffic like checkout processes and customer service interactions.
Same IP Failover: Maintains sessions and transactions during ISP outages, providing seamless failover.
Real-Time Adaptation: Adjusts to changing internet conditions to prevent slowdowns and jitter.
Bigleaf Wireless Connect: Offers backup connectivity through a 4G LTE network for uninterrupted service.
Zero-Touch Installation: Simplifies the setup process without interrupting your business operations.

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Wireless Connectivity: The New Frontier in eCommerce

Imagine a safety net that ensures network connectivity even in the face of physical line damage. With Bigleaf Wireless Connect, that’s a reality. We’ll discuss how this wireless solution, in conjunction with Bigleaf’s optimizations, offers unparalleled connectivity resilience for your eCommerce operations.

Checklist for eCommerce Site Owners to Maximize Uptime:

Ensure you have a reliable hosting provider with a track record of uptime.
Opt for a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up global content delivery.
Implement website caching to reduce server load and improve page load speed.
Regularly back up your website to recover quickly in case of downtime.
Choose Bigleaf’s SD-WAN solution for automatic failover to keep your site live and provide reliable internet for eCommerce platforms.
Monitor website performance with tools that alert you to connectivity issues immediately.
Schedule regular maintenance during off-peak hours to avoid disrupting shoppers.

Conclusion:

Reliable internet isn’t just a supporting character in the story of eCommerce—it’s the star. With Bigleaf Networks, experience the peace of mind that comes from knowing your platform is powered by top-tier connectivity solutions. Say goodbye to the fear of downtime and hello to a world where every digital interaction is smooth, fast, and reliable.

Interested in a connectivity consultation or eager to learn more about Bigleaf’s impact on eCommerce? Learn more about how Bigleaf can revolutionize your eCommerce connectivity by visiting our website or getting in touch with our team. Contact us today to ensure your online business platform is equipped to succeed in the digital marketplace.

Lifesaving connectivity: How Life Flight Network stays connected in remote areas with Bigleaf

Amy Chan — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 21:08:49 +0000

Life Flight Network's reliability at forefront of emergency care

Life Flight Network, the largest not-for-profit air medical transport provider in the United States, epitomizes the critical importance of reliability in emergency medical service. With a steadfast commitment encapsulated by their company promise, “There. When you need us,” they ensure exceptional care, transporting patients with their fleet of helicopters, airplanes, and ground ambulances from accident sites or remote communities, between medical facilities, or to specialists in other states. From the rugged mountains of Montana and the remote backcountry of Idaho to the sprawling plains of Washington and the picturesque Oregon coastline, Life Flight Network’s workforce of over 900 professionals is dedicated to delivering safe and expeditious care.

Seamless communication: Lifeline to critical care

Life Flight Network’s ability to communicate and coordinate seamlessly plays a pivotal role in their life-saving mission. From the moment a dispatch call is received, effective communication ensures crucial details are conveyed accurately and promptly to the pilot and medical crew. This communication is essential for both the highly trained professionals delivering ICU-level care en route and the medical team at the hospital preparing to receive the patient. This allows all teams to prepare and ensure swift adaptation to changing circumstances, including pilots and transport crews who are navigating transport efficiency amid varying weather conditions and flight logistics.

Inside Life Flight Network's network infrastructure

Life Flight Network operates a sophisticated infrastructure designed to ensure uninterrupted communication and access to critical resources across its numerous aircraft bases and operational sites. Facilitating communication between different base networks is pivotal, particularly for their systems like radio over IP used in their dispatch centers.

Additionally, their network supports critical applications such as Flight Vector and Rescue Net, instrumental in tracking flights, facilitating real-time decision-making, and managing billing processes. Life Flight Network operates a hub-and-spoke topology, with their hub in Beaverton, Oregon, which extends connections to all their sites through point-to-point VPN connections.

In a bid to accommodate their continued growth, the organization is embarking on a transition journey, migrating their on-premises footprint into Azure. This strategic move underscores their commitment to evolving with technological advancements while maintaining the high standards of reliability and performance crucial for their life-saving operations.

How Bigleaf supports Life Flight Network's critical missions

Bigleaf emerges as a transformative solution in Life Flight Network’s network infrastructure, addressing challenges with remarkable efficacy. Through features like same IP failover, Life Flight Network achieves unparalleled reliability, seamlessly transitioning between circuits without disrupting operations or compromising connectivity. Leveraging public IPs provided by Bigleaf further enhances network stability and simplifies configuration processes, ensuring consistent performance across operational sites.

In managing VPN traffic, Bigleaf ensures it rides the most stable circuit while providing redundancy and failover for the VPN when a circuit goes down or degrades (without dropping the session) and prioritizes traffic type within the VPN tunnels—delivering stability otherwise unachievable when dependent on the performance of the public internet.

Bigleaf’s simplicity and reliability are hallmarks of its effectiveness in Life Flight Network’s operations. With Bigleaf, there’s no need for intricate configurations or constant monitoring; it simply works. “I really appreciate the simplicity of Bigleaf,” says Jonathan Knowles, Life Flight Network’s network engineer. “The entire network team is comprised of my manager and me; not having another thing I need to worry about or babysit is awesome.”

Bigleaf Wireless Connect: Elevating Life Flight's Network’s reliability in underserved areas

Bigleaf Wireless Connect adds to Life Flight Network’s arsenal of network solutions, providing essential redundancy and reliability particularly in areas where traditional connections are limited, but core operations and services are primarily centered. “Most of our bases are positioned in rural locations where, if someone were to have a horrible accident, you know, the worst day of their life, we would be able to get to them and then to a hospital much faster than with ground transport,” Knowles describes.

Historically, Life Flight Network relied on point-to-point wireless solutions, but these often proved unreliable, with connections frequently dropping in and out unpredictably. More recently, the company has deployed Starlink in some of their locations as a primary circuit.

Bigleaf Wireless Connect offers a cost-effective and flexible solution for Life Flight Network’s diverse connectivity needs. “It’s absolutely crucial for us to have different flavors of connectivity because we can’t always get a hardline connection,” says Knowles. “We have such eclectic locations, from metro areas with millions of people to places that barely have a post office. To have another tool for backup is really great.”

Knowles further elaborates, “We’ve used other solutions but that adds another pane of glass to manage; whereas Wireless Connect is not only more affordable, but it’s managed by Bigleaf, which is more performant, in my opinion.”

With Bigleaf Wireless Connect, Life Flight Network gains peace of mind knowing that they have a robust backup solution in place, enhancing their overall network reliability and ensuring continuity of life-saving operations.

Experience transformation with Bigleaf and Bigleaf Wireless Connect

Unlock the transformative potential of Bigleaf and Bigleaf Wireless Connect to improve network reliability and performance. Enable uninterrupted operations, even in the most challenging environments.

Do you have limited connectivity options? Contact us for a demo and learn how Bigleaf Wireless Connect can help.

NEW! Bigleaf Wireless Connect

Amy Chan — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Empower your business with uninterrupted connectivity

Bigleaf is synonymous with optimized network connectivity and known for seamless failover in the event of a service outage, brownout, or other instability. We take your connectivity very seriously and want to make sure your business experiences minimal downtime, so your teams continue to run productively. With our new Bigleaf Wireless Connect service, we’re providing a new way to help you stay connected to your customers and your applications.

What is Bigleaf Wireless Connect?

Bigleaf Wireless Connect provides 5G cellular plans delivered through a dual-SIM mobile router. Designed to work with Bigleaf’s routers, Wireless Connect can be added to any Bigleaf service plan to work with your primary connection to provide business continuity.

Why Bigleaf Wireless Connect?

There are many wireless connectivity solutions already available in the market today, from unlimited data plans to Cradlepoint routers. The good news is that most of these options can already be paired with Bigleaf to deliver connectivity and failover. However, our customers have shared with us that evaluating, acquiring, and managing these additional products and services from multiple vendors is time consuming and an administrative chore.

With Wireless Connect, we’ve brought together a mobile router and the option of two straightforward data plans that can be added on to any Bigleaf service plan, whether it’s a new deployment or for a site with Bigleaf already in place. These plans are set up so there will never be any overage fees. Wireless Connect is also managed by Bigleaf, which means service agreements, billing, and technical support are all handled by our team—eliminating the extra time and effort often needed to work with additional vendors.

Your business can’t run without internet, and Wireless Connect presents an affordable, easy, and effective solution to ensuring uninterrupted connectivity across multiple sites, with:

A secondary connection that enables application performance optimization and downtime mitigation through Bigleaf’s same IP failover, real-time circuit monitoring, dynamic QoS, and intelligent load balancing
Convenient, single-vendor billing
No overage fees
Plug-and-play setup for reliable, high-speed 5G connectivity
Dual SIM support for multiple-carrier coverage options
24×7 one-stop, top-rated technical support

When to Install Bigleaf Wireless Connect?

Bigleaf Wireless Connect delivers high-speed, wireless internet that is ideal to ensure business continuity, especially in areas where wired ISP options may be limited.

Wireless Connect is also ideal when you need a “just-in-time” internet connection, like when you’re setting up a new office and waiting for your wired lines to be installed. Wireless Connect plans ship with pre-provisioned hardware equipped with pre-installed SIM cards and your selected data plan already activated for quick setup and connectivity. Then, as soon as your primary circuits are connected, Wireless Connect can immediately become your secondary, failover, or line for load balancing line.

Dependability meets simplicity

This business-ready internet will keep your applications running flawlessly, ensuring high productivity, with plug-and-play simplicity. As a hassle-free solution for any business that needs affordable failover and redundancy, or as a stopgap for businesses awaiting a wired installation.

Bigleaf Wireless Connect isn’t just a backup solution; it’s a lifeline for your business operations. Minimize downtime worries, safeguard your operations, keep your applications running smoothly, and ensure your team stays productive.

Learn more about how Bigleaf Wireless Connect can benefit your business today!

Maximizing productivity with Bigleaf’s real-time traffic adaptation

Sean Valant — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:14:00 +0000

How Bigleaf Helps Keep Your Business Running Smoothly

In today’s fast-moving business world, being efficient and productive is super important. A big part of this is making sure your internet works well, especially for important work tasks. Bigleaf Networks has a smart way to make sure your internet doesn’t slow you down.

Bigleaf Makes Your Internet Smarter

Think of your internet like a highway. With Bigleaf, it’s as if this highway never gets jammed, so your important data (like emails, video calls, and files) moves fast, without any trouble. Bigleaf does this by checking your internet conditions all the time and making changes on the spot to avoid any slowdowns. This means your most important work gets priority and runs smoothly, even when lots of people are online at the same time.

Bigleaf’s smart system doesn’t just pick who goes first; it also quickly changes paths if it sees a problem, keeping your internet stable and quick. This is great for video calls, using online tools, or sending big files. It’s a new kind of technology that’s better than old internet setups, giving you less waiting and more reliability.

Why Bigleaf Makes a Difference

Choosing Bigleaf is like getting a helpful tool that makes sure your business can do its best work without waiting on slow internet. It gives you control and clear insight into how well your internet is doing, which is really important for businesses today. With Bigleaf, you worry less about internet problems and have more time to focus on what your business does best.

Bigleaf’s smart internet help is a game-changer for keeping things running smoothly and making sure your business can keep up with everything you need to do.

Learn More About Keeping Your Internet Fast and Reliable with Bigleaf.

A version of this content was originally published as part of our Linkedin Newsletter, Bigleaf Bytes, in January 2024. Subscribe now on LinkedIn.

TeleCost Savings leverages Bigleaf Networks for enhanced internet reliability

Tabby Worthington — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 16:42:33 +0000

Partner profile

TeleCost Savings is a leading telecommunications consulting firm specializing in helping businesses across various industries simplify the process of obtaining the highest quality internet, voice, and data services with a focus on delivering value and ensuring clients receive the most for their investments, TeleCost Savings has garnered a reputation for its commitment to excellence.

Challenge

Enhancing internet connectivity for business clients

Dean Stewart, CTO of TeleCost Savings, recognized the need to improve internet connectivity solutions for clients seeking reliable and uninterrupted service. In a world where businesses rely heavily on internet-dependent applications, maintaining network reliability is essential. He explains, “Businesses need a solution that goes beyond conventional backup internet. They require a reliable and robust system that ensures consistent connectivity.”

Solution

Bigleaf Networks revolutionizes internet reliability

TeleCost Savings became a partner with Bigleaf Networks to address the connectivity challenges faced by its clients. Bigleaf’s innovative SD-WAN technology offered a solution that went beyond redundancy and transformed the way businesses experienced internet connectivity.

“Bigleaf Internet is more than just a backup; it’s a game-changer,” says Stewart. “It ensures businesses get what they pay for and eliminates the chaos that typically accompanies network outages.”

The partnership with Bigleaf Networks allows businesses to seamlessly integrate their existing second circuit with Bigleaf’s technology, guaranteeing optimal performance. In scenarios where the primary circuit experiences downtime, Bigleaf’s technology effortlessly transitions to the secondary circuit, preventing disruptions to VPNs and critical applications.

Stewart adds, “With Bigleaf, clients can achieve better voice and video quality without the need for dedicated fiber. It’s a cost-effective and elegant solution.”

"Bigleaf Internet is more than just a backup; it's a game-changer. It ensures businesses get what they pay for and eliminates the chaos that typically accompanies network outages."

Dean Stewart

Demonstrating the power of Bigleaf

TeleCost Savings not only advocates for Bigleaf Networks as an agent but also educates clients on the technology’s capabilities. They provide clients with insights into how Bigleaf’s dual IPsec tunnels and real-time routing work to ensure uninterrupted connectivity.

Stewart further emphasizes, “Bigleaf’s setup is incredibly simple, and its support is exceptional. The setup takes less than a minute, and if clients ever need assistance, Bigleaf’s support team is readily available.”

Navigating the Complex Telecom Landscape

TeleCost Savings navigates the complexity of the telecommunications industry on behalf of its clients. By working closely with businesses to understand their unique needs and challenges, TeleCost Savings positions Bigleaf Networks as a pivotal component of their tailored solutions. Stewart comments, “Bigleaf Networks becomes the cornerstone of our solutions, ensuring that everything works seamlessly together. It doesn’t disrupt existing systems; it enhances them.”

Conclusion

Dean Stewart’s TeleCost Savings is committed to providing businesses with the best internet connectivity solutions. By partnering with Bigleaf Networks, they have transformed how businesses experience internet reliability. Stewart’s dedication to delivering value and his deep knowledge of Bigleaf’s capabilities have made him a trusted advocate for businesses seeking to enhance their network performance.

In a world where network interruptions can have significant repercussions, TeleCost Savings and Bigleaf Networks are working together to provide businesses with the peace of mind that comes from reliable and resilient internet connectivity. With a focus on education and advocacy, they ensure that clients not only have the right solution but also understand how it works and why it’s essential.

Do you need to ensure your business has consistent connectivity?

Connect with us and learn more.

[Infographic] Plugging into profits: rewiring brick and mortar retail

Sean Valant — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 18:14:11 +0000

Brick and mortar retail has undergone a seismic shift, compelled to adapt in response to the pervasive rise and demand for eCommerce. Businesses are adapting both by recalibrating how they operate their physical locations and by adopting their own ecommerce strategies. They are approaching both methods by leveraging technology.

More than ever, everything is in the retail space is connected, and there’s also more to connect than ever before. Retail businesses have revamped their in-store atmospheres, emphasizing personalization, interactive displays, and in-store events to engage customers seeking more than mere transactions. They’ve also restructured their systematic operations by incorporating handheld devices, scan-and-go technology, and loyalty programs.

Our infographic below shows exactly what retailers are investing in to ensure their bottom line stays healthy and their customers stay happy. What this also uncovers is their heavy dependence on network connectivity and what happens when their network fails.

With the knowledge that over $4 trillion passes through US cash registers annually, let’s take a closer look at exactly how brick and mortar retail is being rewired.

Learn how Bigleaf can protect your retail business today while preparing it for a successful tomorrow.

Passero Associates mitigates internet disruptions and downtime, amid limited ISP options

Tabby Worthington — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 21:01:29 +0000

Overview

Engineering and architecture firms must continually adapt to evolving conditions in large-scale projects, necessitating seamless communication, collaboration, and uninterrupted connectivity. As an esteemed player in the fields of building and airport design as well as survey work, Passero Associates needed to guarantee uninterrupted and dependable connectivity for its second-largest site’s team and senior executives. They found that using Bigleaf allowed them to minimize outages and downtime that disrupted their business operations and productivity.

Customer profile

Passero Associates, based in Rochester, NY, is a well-established engineering and architecture firm with a sterling reputation for delivering innovative and aesthetic projects. With a team of around 170 employees spread across eight different sites, the company manages a harmonious work-sharing model where tasks are distributed and collaborated upon irrespective of geographic boundaries. Their main office in Rochester houses around 90 of their talented workforce, with the second-largest office situated in St Augustine, FL, where they recently integrated the Bigleaf solution. Their daily operations are heavily reliant on software suites such as AutoCAD for designs and Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration.

Business challenge

Unreliable internet connectivity with limited ISP options

Passero’s St. Augustine office, uniquely situated on an airport property, faced a perplexing connectivity issue. While they believed they had a direct “Fiber” connection, their connection setup was more intricate. The data link involved an initial journey to a point-to-point antenna before making its way to the fiber network. Due to this indirect route, the connection didn’t regularly perform as needed. On top of that, it was exceptionally sensitive to weather conditions, which was particularly troublesome with Florida’s various weather patterns.

This created productivity disruptions and business-stopping outages caused by jitter-laden public internet connections and adverse weather. More than the hours-long downtimes, the unpredictability of these disruptions was a menace. Imagine the uncertainty and stress of not knowing when or for how long your business-critical tools, like AutoCAD and Microsoft 365, including Teams, might be unavailable. It’s akin to driving on a road with random roadblocks. Such uncertainties can be as disruptive as consistent outages, if not more. The erratic nature of these connectivity issues made it challenging for key team members, including the CEO and CFO, to effectively operate their business. This recurrent and unpredictable problem nudged them to seek a failproof solution that would bring back reliability to their network.

Goals

Eliminate downtime caused by unstable connectivity, which directly affected important members like the CEO and CFO.
Adopt a quick-to-implement solution that didn’t require a prolonged setup process.
Find a flexible option since there were ongoing discussions about relocating their site. The company wanted to avoid committing to ISPs that mandated multiple-year contracts.

Solution

Bigleaf's network optimization SD-WAN

Understanding their needs, Chad Krout, Passero’s Director of IT, received a recommendation from Paul Miller of Integritas Group, LLC to try out Bigleaf’s network optimization solution. Being familiar with many solutions and their impact on business needs, Paul understood Bigleaf’s ability to quickly drop into a site and immediately resolve connectivity issues that caused outages and downtime. Given the pressing need and Chad’s trust in Paul, Krout decided to try Bigleaf for himself.

Along with the Bigleaf service, Chad added a Verizon 5G device as his second circuit that allowed him to take advantage of Bigleaf’s same-IP address failover, collective circuit monitoring, dynamic QoS, and intelligent load balancing.

In turn, Chad saw a difference almost right away. Within the first week, the airport fiber unexpectedly suffered an outage, but the office operations didn’t skip a beat. Thanks to Bigleaf, the staff in St. Augustine carried on with their work, blissfully unaware of any connectivity hiccup. Krout pointed out, “They were still able to make Teams calls and continue working without disruption. In the past, they would have been completely dead in the water.”

Furthermore, Bigleaf ensures Microsoft Teams and other cloud-based applications run smoothly even during brown-outs, times when the internet connection doesn’t completely drop (so traditional failover doesn’t kick in), but rather performs so poorly that internet-based apps are practically unusable. With Bigleaf, Passero has revamped their connectivity landscape, ensuring a smoother workflow even when facing internet challenges.

See how Microsoft Teams performs with and without Bigleaf

Passero's future plans with Bigleaf

Bigleaf’s ease of setup and use was also a notable advantage for Passero Associates. It allowed them to immediately deploy a solution and paid off quickly when the outage hit the week following the installation. Krout emphasizes the straightforward implementation process, noting, “The ease and reliability that Bigleaf offers stand out. After setting it up, the only change we made was to our VPN configuration. It works efficiently right from the start.”

Moreover, the flexibility of Bigleaf’s solution provides Passero with the agility it needs. As the firm considers possible relocations or expansions, they’ll know they’ll be able to bring along and set up their Bigleaf router and Verizon 5G to connect their site to the internet immediately, even if they’ll have to wait for a primary line to be pulled in. Then after a second line is installed, they’ll be able to return to their redundant 2-circuit setup that provides the optimized network connectivity they enjoy today. With Bigleaf, wherever Passero decides to operate, they’ll be assured of a robust and reliable internet connection and optimally performing cloud apps.

Are you struggling with internet outages and downtime but limited by your ISP options? Connect with us and learn more.

What does a leaf have to do with networking?

Amy Chan — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 21:28:39 +0000

Nature is the best engineer. We can see that with how leaves feature a naturally redundant system. See how we apply that same concept to our network to deliver reliable internet connectivity without complexity and came up with our name, Bigleaf Networks!

[Infographic] Things to consider for better internet failover

Amy Chan — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:28:58 +0000

In today’s digital-rich world, having failover coverage is crucial for any modern business that relies on internet-based applications. There are many options and points to consider when creating the right failover setup for your business — but how do you choose?

Walk through these short steps to determine what’s best for your organization.

Download infographic

Get more detail on things to consider for a better failover setup or connect with us for a personal demo.

How to scale your network across multiple sites without upending your tech stack

Amy Chan — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 22:09:33 +0000

IT managers face a lot of challenges when scaling networked systems to multiple locations. The best-known methods include deploying the identical technology stack and processes at each site.

Unfortunately, IT can’t exert control over key aspects of application performance, especially when businesses are relying on cloud and internet-based applications.

That’s because it’s not enough to duplicate the software and hardware stack at each location. In a distributed, networked organization that relies on the public internet, the network itself does not perform identically at every site. So, employees and customers will not enjoy the same experience in every office, warehouse, or site on the network.

Same applications, different performance

For example, connections to cloud-based applications can be perfectly responsive at the company headquarters but sluggish in a branch office, or vice versa, due to any number of factors that are outside the IT team’s control:

Availability. It’s difficult to standardize on a uniform internet connection across the country, even across city neighborhoods. In each geographic location, there may be a limited number and/or different internet service providers (ISPs) with a specific selection of circuit types.
Traffic patterns. Even the same ISP, circuit type, and service package may perform differently from one location to another, due to real time jitter, latency, and packet loss.
Outages. Hardware and software issues, broken or downed circuits, cyberattacks, or power failures can disrupt network connections locally or globally.

Network optimization ensures consistency

One way to ensure consistency across multiple locations is to add the Bigleaf Networks optimization platform to the mix. Bigleaf sits outside the firewall, so there’s no need to make changes to established security protocols or other aspects of the tech stack at any individual site.

With a plug-and-play router at each site and a purpose-built IP network in between, Bigleaf monitors and directs network traffic along the optimal path over the public internet to and from the data’s destination. Bigleaf moves cloud network traffic seamlessly around blockages and outages to improve performance and reliability of business-critical, cloud-enabled applications.

With Bigleaf, employees and customers in every location will enjoy reliable connectivity that delivers a consistent user experience.

Bigleaf works with any ISP, any connection type, any technology stack, and any firewall, to connect the network with any cloud-based application or service. IT can continue to deploy a tried-and-true tech stack at every location, including SaaS, VoIP, and other business-critical services.

Bigleaf maintains the network’s stability and resilience, and the consistent network architecture supports optimal system performance in all locations.

Plus, Bigleaf Cloud Connect provides detailed insights into the performance of every circuit at every location, so the IT team can identify risks and prevent any impact on future performance.

Check out the power of network optimization with Bigleaf. Schedule a demo today.

[Infographic] Network Health: The Bedrock of Healthcare Cloud Migration

Amy Chan — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 21:45:54 +0000

Network health: The bedrock of healthcare cloud migration

As healthcare organizations navigate the digital shift, the cloud is not just a buzzword but a beacon for progress and innovation. By 2025, it’s projected that a sweeping 90% of these entities will have achieved healthcare cloud migration, creating a digital backbone for key services such as practice management, electronic medical records, patient communication, and especially telehealth visits. The dependency on cloud technology underscores the criticality of an unwavering internet connection for service delivery and patient care.

Network health is imperative

The importance of reliable network health in this migration is highlighted in our insightful infographic. With telehealth’s adoption increasing by 25% since 2022, the implications of network interruptions are not just inconvenient—they can be critical. A robust network is now an indispensable component of healthcare delivery.

Encouragingly, 94% of IT professionals champion cloud migration for its benefits, which include simplified compliance with regulatory standards like HIPAA. Pioneering this endeavor, Bigleaf Networks assures uninterrupted, secure connectivity—a cornerstone for modern healthcare operations.

The impact of network health on healthcare cloud migration

Understand the impact of network health on healthcare cloud migration, enriched with real-world applications and insights, through these curated resources:

Discover insights on why internet uptime is a significant investment for IT leaders, especially within healthcare, reflecting on the growth of SaaS and the crucial role of reliable internet connections.
Explore how Bigleaf’s SD-WAN solution addresses the critical needs of medical offices and care facilities, ensuring PHI is protected and HIPAA compliance is seamless, all while enhancing the digital experience.
Healthcare leaders looking to maintain the optimal performance of cloud technologies will find invaluable support through Bigleaf’s SD-WAN, ensuring continuous uptime and quality care delivery.
The increasing reliance of healthcare operations on internet technology demands a robust network solution. Bigleaf’s offerings aim to bolster the industry’s digital transformation.
A case study from DP Fox Ventures showcases how Bigleaf’s SD-WAN can sustain business operations and prevent costly downtimes, reflecting Bigleaf’s ability to maintain business continuity during critical cloud migration efforts.

Learn More About Bigleaf

For healthcare organizations poised to enhance care delivery via cloud services, the journey starts with a solid network foundation. Download our infographic for a deeper understanding and schedule a demo to discover how Bigleaf can enhance the reliability and performance of your healthcare applications in the cloud.

Download infographic

Bigleaf preserves continuity of service for Innovation Refunds

Amy Chan — Tue, 02 May 2023 21:22:34 +0000

Innovation Refunds is a fintech-based tax specialist that helps its clients to obtain tax refunds under a federal program that is due to expire in April 2024. To prepare for the upcoming deadline-driven surge in activity, the company is adding additional locations and moving its headquarters in 2023, while tripling its staff of accountants, tax attorneys, and other professionals. During this growth phase and beyond, Innovation Refunds relies on Bigleaf to support business continuity with stable, consistent network performance across all locations.

Customer profile: Innovation Refunds

Innovation Refunds employs a staff of 1,063, including over 700 who were hired in the past year. About a third of employees currently work in their West Des Moines, Iowa office.

For the past two years, Innovation Refunds has focused on obtaining tax refunds for company clients who qualify for an employee retention credit (ERC) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The ERC expires in April 2024, and Innovation Refunds expects activity to increase dramatically as the deadline approaches.

Challenge: Maintain service levels amid rapid expansion

To prepare for the additional activity, the company is continuing to execute its staffing plan with additional locations and capacity in Arizona, Iowa, and Florida, including new headquarters in downtown Miami. The move will improve the company’s proximity to key financial partners and markets.

Innovation Refunds manages its business entirely online, including exchanging private, confidential information with clients, tax attorneys, tax preparers, and the Federal Government. “Downtime and poor connectivity pose huge risks to the business,” said Nathan Phinney, CIO of Innovation Refunds. “We’ve effectively mitigated those risks with Bigleaf’s SD-WAN technology,” he added.

Solution: Bigleaf delivers reliable, consistent network performance

Nathan introduced Innovation Refunds to Bigleaf Networks when he served the company as a managed service provider. Prior to that, the company had set up internet connectivity with redundant fiber lines from two separate carriers. Both carriers used the same provider for the last mile, however. While each line was reliable, the combination was not fault-tolerant, according to Nathan. He brought in multiple carriers and partnered with Bigleaf to deliver last-mile diversity that optimized network performance and resilience.

Bigleaf has been instrumental in the company’s expansion plans, as well. Each of the new Innovation Refunds offices is serviced by a different set of ISPs who don’t offer a uniform choice of circuit types or service packages. Bigleaf works with any ISP and connection type, so Nathan can ensure a consistent, stable internet connection for all of the company’s disparate locations.

Since adding Bigleaf, Innovation Refunds has weathered several outages – including planned maintenance – without any downtime or disruption. When potential issues arise, Nathan’s IT team receives email or Slack alerts from Bigleaf. The team can address those problems proactively, without any degradation in the user experience for employees or clients. If one of the circuits experiences problems or even fails entirely, Bigleaf Same-IP Failover moves network traffic to a working circuit, automatically and seamlessly.

“Even when there’s an outage, our users don’t know there’s anything wrong,” Nathan asserted.

Because Bigleaf operates outside the firewall, Innovation Refunds was able to maintain its established networking and security policies. Those specific, mission-critical technologies enable the company to remain in compliance with regulations that govern financial institutions and accounting firms. Recently, the company earned AICPA SOC2 attestation, allowing Innovation Refunds to work directly with banks and other financial service providers.

“Our success depends on reliable and resilient internet connectivity.And there’s no way I’d want to do this without Bigleaf."

Nathan Phinney

CIO, Innovation Refunds

Relocating with cellular service — and Bigleaf

As Innovation Refunds began transitioning its headquarters from Iowa to Florida, employees were eager to begin work in the Miami office. Unfortunately, the fiber circuits had not been set up yet. In the interim, Nathan’s team provided internet access by connecting multiple cellular providers to the Bigleaf service, via a pair of Cradlepoint wireless routers, so employees could begin work immediately at the new headquarters.

Bigleaf supported internet-based applications, including business-critical voice and video calls, over the relatively low-bandwidth cellular connections. Bigleaf’s Dynamic QoS and intelligent load balancing work together to automatically identify and prioritize VoIP and video session traffic, which is particularly sensitive to internet performance issues. Bigleaf routes those sessions to the best available path, so employees can communicate without disruptions or distractions.

“Bigleaf’s automated QoS does a remarkable job,” Nathan said. “The default settings have worked 100% of the time, so we don’t need to worry about programming any of it.”

Once the new fiber circuits were installed, Innovation Refunds retained the cellular services for redundancy. Nathan expects the company to be increasingly busy as the ERC claims deadline approaches, and the expanding workload will make further disruptions intolerable. It’s a significant amount of work to collect the required documentation for a single refund, and time is growing short for the potential claimants who have yet to begin the process.

“The cost of downtime will also rise as the deadline approaches,” Nathan explained. “The last two months are more valuable than the previous ten months,” he said. “Especially during this busy period, our success depends on reliable and resilient internet connectivity.”

“And there’s no way I’d want to do this without Bigleaf,” he concluded.

About the Employee Retention Credit

Businesses may qualify for a refundable tax credit if they retained salaried employees – and paid employment taxes – despite sustaining losses during the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020 and 2021.

Qualifying businesses may receive Employee Retention Credit (ERC) tax refunds of up to $26,000 per employee. Innovation Refunds offers free payroll tax refund estimates at getrefunds.com.

Watch our webinar with Nathan Phinney, CIO of Innovation Refunds

Don’t miss our upcoming webinar: “Does your network…not-work? Eliminating internet unpredictability in 2023.” Nathan Phinney, CIO of Innovation Refunds and Lori Stout, CMO of Bigleaf Networks will discuss proven technologies and strategies for preserving business-critical network operations with Michael Krieger of Network Computing.

[Webinar] How to eliminate internet unpredictability

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:31:33 +0000

Organizations of all sizes and types depend on reliable internet connectivity to support vital activities.

But what if your network does not support your business-critical needs?

You’ll find the answers in our webinar “Does your network…NOT work? Eliminating internet unpredictability in 2023,” available on demand.

This lively forum reveals proven strategies from industry experts Nathan Phinney, CIO of fintech company Innovation Refunds and Bigleaf CMO Lori Stout, with moderator Michael Krieger of Network Computing.

You’ll learn:

The true cost of downtime and how to eliminate the risks to your business
How your internet connection can become your biggest competitive advantage
How to create a seamless user experience across multiple locations
The benefits of 360-degree network monitoring and proactive troubleshooting

Register now to watch this insightful webinar.

Meanwhile, check out this case study to learn more about webinar guest Nathan Phinney and his work as CIO of Innovation Refunds.

For a better customer experience, focus on network health

Lori Stout — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 17:55:28 +0000

I just celebrated my first 100 days as Bigleaf’s CMO. Before joining this company, I worked in the restaurant tech industry, but I’ve spent most of my career in the world of unified communications and contact centers. I developed and implemented marketing strategies for world-class customer experience (CX) companies like NICE, Talkdesk, and Vonage.

Bigleaf is a network optimization provider in the SD-WAN space. At first glance, that seems like a departure from my UCaaS and CCaaS background. But in fact, I’m experiencing the sensation of coming “home” to my CX roots. This doesn’t feel like a brand-new industry.

Here’s why.

Companies lose $1.6 trillion a year to bad CX

Yes, that’s trillions — with a “t” — according to a consumer survey from Accenture. And if you put on your consumer hat for a minute, that figure doesn’t seem so implausible. How many times have you tried to connect with a company, only to be put on hold? Or you were routed to agent after agent, then got disconnected and had to start the process again?

Or maybe you’ve started an online chat with a customer service representative that takes you down a winding path, where you provide your account number, describe your problem, wait… and wait… and wait… while “the agent is typing,” only to be cut off. Then you have to start the whole process again with a new agent.

Few things make this mild-mannered marketer more incensed than a business that doesn’t value my time. And I’m not alone.

84% of consumers believe that the experience they receive from a company is just as valuable as the product or service they purchase. And yet, fewer than half those companies say they have the technology required to deliver a great experience.

Now — putting your business professional hat back on — what can we do as product and service providers to elevate the customer experience? How do we deliver as a brand?

Protect CX investments

Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is currently a $113 billion industry, growing at a rate of nearly 20% a year. Contact center as a service (CCaS) is a $5 billion industry, growing 17% annually. And the average organization spends over half a million dollars per year on CX technology. It has never been more important to protect those investments with complementary technologies that offer a high value. And if the protection comes with a comparatively low price tag, a positive return on investment is assured.

Bigleaf provides that protection, supporting your internet-dependent CX with reliable, performant connectivity. And this is where my new mission as CMO at Bigleaf intersects with the customer experience industry I’ve grown to love and obsess over for the past 15 years.

Downtime adds to costs and risk

I was shocked to learn that internet downtime incurs a staggering $5,600 per minute in costs to an average business, according to Gartner. In addition to the obvious risk to revenue, downtime erodes employee engagement, brand reputation — and yes, customer experience.

More bad news: Even when circuits are up, they don’t always perform as expected. The Bigleaf team discovered that uptime is fully usable only about 93% of the time. The remaining 7% translates to an average of 604 hours per year. For 31 of those hours, the circuit is completely unavailable. And while the circuit may be up for the other 573 hours, it’s barely usable. So, for more than 90 minutes per day, on average, you get jittery phone calls, disconnected chat sessions, and frustrated customers.

During that unusable uptime, the circuit can’t support CX tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other session-based and cloud-based service channels. From the users’ perspective, your technology is just not working well enough for them to do business with you.

Even worse, it’s nearly impossible for IT teams to quickly pinpoint the cause of the internet blackouts or brownouts, given the complexity and siloed nature of today’s cloud technology stacks.

Prevent CX failures with Bigleaf

Fortunately, Bigleaf provides an easy-to-implement, affordable solution to these and other network performance issues, so you can preserve the customer experience you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Bigleaf is a plug-and-play network optimization solution that:

Offers reliable, flawless connectivity and consistent user experience across all applications and locations, intelligently and automatically.
Installs in minutes and starts to work immediately, integrating seamlessly with established network and security policies and technologies, including your existing ISPs, firewall, and regulatory compliance setup.
Provides 360-degree visibility into performance of each circuit, to identify potential problems and solve them proactively—often before you even know there’s an issue.

For your CX investment, an intelligent, omnichannel customer experience is only as strong as your internet connection. And after conversations with IT teams from businesses of all sizes, the best piece of advice I can offer is to be proactive.

Start now to protect your network, your customer experience, and your bottom line. Waiting for problems to surface before you take action is like waiting to buy car insurance until after you’ve had an accident.

When you’re ready to see Bigleaf in action, we’d be happy to offer you a demo of our web dashboard and the eagle-eye view it provides into network operations. And if you’d like to hear about Bigleaf straight from your IT peers, check out our library of customer stories . They provide specific examples of the critical role network optimization plays in customer experience.

I’m looking forward to even more innovation from the Bigleaf team in 2023. It feels so good to be “home.”

CNI harnesses Bigleaf to improve internet continuity for utility companies

Amy Chan — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 23:14:09 +0000

Computer Network, Inc. (CNI) turned to Bigleaf Networks to reduce the impact of network outages and improve internet continuity, reliability and performance for the utility companies it serves. CNI’s utility management system (UMS) helps to streamline and control operations for more than 200 utility boards and municipalities across the U.S. that together provide water, natural gas, electricity, wastewater, and sanitation services to their business and residential customers.

Like many organizations that conduct business online, utility boards rely on internet-based communications and applications to manage their operations. If the internet connection is unavailable, even briefly, utilities and their customers risk losing access to critical services, in addition to incurring the costs associated with the disruption of ordinary business functions.

Bigleaf mitigates impact of network outages

With Bigleaf, CNI keeps internet connections up and running at its own Cullman, AL-based headquarters and at a growing number of utility company locations. CNI chose Bigleaf for its Same-IP Failover feature, which works in concert with a static IP address while switching traffic in the background from a faulty circuit to a working connection, in a seamless failover.

Some of CNI’s utility clients already maintained backup connections so they could execute a failover manually when one line went down. While this type of redundancy is helpful, many network configurations and policies don’t allow failover unless there is a complete outage. Further, this failover process itself causes an interruption in service.

Bigleaf, by comparison, initiates the failover automatically and instantaneously, so there is no interruption to data transmission or to the user experience. This seamless failover is especially important during session-based applications and technologies, such as VoIP, videoconferencing, or VPNs, when the slightest degradation or disruption of circuit performance can effectively end the session.

Bigleaf also identifies, prioritizes, and routes internet traffic automatically to the path that offers the best performance for each data type at a given time. The transition to a better connection is so smooth that the user will not notice any change, even in the middle of a video conference, internet-based phone call, online payment, or other traffic-sensitive interaction.

“Bigleaf Same-IP Failover solves many of the issues that our clients face. Bigleaf also provides quality of service and load balancing of the clients’ internet traffic.”

Mike McConatha, President, CNI

Works with any ISP, connection type, or configuration

CNI appreciated Bigleaf’s plug-and-play simplicity and broad compatibility. Bigleaf can be integrated easily into existing network configurations, and it works with any ISP or circuit type. This flexibility was especially important to CNI for rural utility clients with limited choices of ISPs and connection types.

CNI can add Bigleaf to the utility companies’ systems quickly and easily, with no change to established network configurations or policies. Many utilities require complex network and security protocols, with established firewalls, virtual private networks, and dedicated connections to payment service providers and preferred ISPs. Bigleaf does not interfere with any of those operations or vendors.

“We wanted a networking solution that was carrier-agnostic, so it can be integrated into any of our clients’ CNI system configurations, with any ISP. Bigleaf gave us that flexibility.”

Jake Morrow, Technical Operations Manager, CNI

With the Bigleaf solution in place, CNI’s clients don’t need to worry about network outages or the frustrating service issues that can result. CNI also uses Bigleaf at its own headquarters office to maintain 99.99% uptime across four circuits: two fiber optic cables, one coax cable, and a cellular router.

The Bigleaf Web Dashboard gives CNI actionable insights on the circuit performance delivered by each ISP and circuit, so any potential problems can be addressed proactively. And Bigleaf support teams are available 24/7 to identify and resolve any urgent issues.

“Bigleaf support has been incredible. When there is an issue, I can call in and typically get it resolved within an hour.”

Randy Bell, Sales Engineer CNI

Are you ready to improve the performance and reliability of your critical, internet-dependent applications? Schedule a free demo and learn how Bigleaf delivers flawless, worry-free connectivity.

Bigleaf prevents network downtime for Hanna Andersson

Amy Chan — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 16:13:20 +0000

Reliable uptime supports productivity and online sales

With an online-only retail operation backed by an internet-enabled data center and warehouse, Hanna Andersson was acutely aware of the risks associated with network downtime. Bigleaf optimized network connectivity at all three locations, to keep the company’s entire e-commerce operation up and running without disruption.

Hanna Andersson depends on e-commerce and ERP

Hanna Andersson is a children’s lifestyle brand with a longstanding reputation for top-quality apparel. The children’s lifestyle brand began selling from a catalog in 1983, and later established 55 retail stores and 11 outlets.

Beginning in 2019, the company pivoted to an online-only sales model and closed all its brick-and-mortar stores. Hanna Andersson’s 400 employees now manage the entire operation from three U.S. sites: headquarters offices in Portland, OR, a data center near Seattle, WA, and a Louisville, KY, distribution center.

Hanna Andersson’s e-commerce system is both an online catalog and a retail sales venue. The website is supported by the company’s ERP, which manages inventory and fulfills orders. Hanna Andersson also relies on critical business applications, including Office 365, other SaaS applications accessed via the cloud and hosted by Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. 

Challenge: Risks and costs of internet downtime

Network downtime is a direct cause of lost productivity, according to Tony Velasco, Director of Infrastructure and Operations for Hanna Andersson. The data center and warehouse are especially sensitive.

“If connectivity goes down at our data center, every single employee is affected,” Tony explained. “Our IT team is inundated with support calls, because no one is able to work,” he continued.

Internet connectivity issues in the warehouse can cause even more disruption. Even when a circuit doesn’t fail completely, intermittent outages or performance degradation can disrupt an entire shift.

When Hanna Andersson relied on a single circuit or a manual failover process – which was the norm before Bigleaf – an intermittent outage could cause a temporary shutdown. On at least one occasion, the entire warehouse staff was sent home for the remainder of their shift due to internet performance issues.

Losses would be especially acute during the holiday season, when the company’s distribution facility runs 24 hours per day, including 3 hours of unmanned order acceptance and processing.

Solution: Bigleaf reduces risk of downtime, ends “fire drills”

Tony evaluated several network optimization and SD-WAN solutions before choosing Bigleaf. Ease of use was a key benefit. Tony was also relieved to find that Bigleaf works outside the firewall, so there was no need to change the company’s established security policies, technologies, or vendors.

Since introducing Bigleaf, Tony doesn’t need to worry about internet downtime or performance optimization. Bigleaf keeps Hanna Andersson’s internet connections up and running, and all business-critical applications perform as expected.

Bigleaf fixed serious issues automatically, before they affected Hanna Andersson’s network operations. In a recent review of his Bigleaf Web Dashboard, Tony learned that there had been an outage on a main circuit that serves the company’s Seattle-area data center. That outage could have caused a downtime event, but Bigleaf corrected the problem seamlessly. For a company with 400 employees and an untold number of customers, even a few minutes of lost productivity and lost sales could have entailed significant costs.

Earlier in the year, one ISP’s line had recurring performance issues and a series of outages. That ISP serves the Hanna Andersson distribution center in Louisville, but thanks to Bigleaf, there was no impact on business operations. Bigleaf monitors circuit performance constantly and directs network traffic automatically to the circuits that are best suited for each application. That dynamic adjustment improves the quality of service so applications and services work as expected.

Result: Bigleaf saves Hanna’s time, money, and brand reputation

“Bigleaf saves my IT team so much time,” Tony said. “Instead of spending hours troubleshooting and resolving problems, we can look at the Bigleaf Web Dashboard to identify and address the source of a faulty connection,” he explained.

When the problem originated with an ISP, Tony presented that ISP with evidence from the Web Dashboard to show where and how the issue could be addressed.

With Bigleaf’s help, Hanna Andersson can now deliver an outstanding customer experience, enhancing the brand’s reputation for quality and reliability. The company was recognized by Newsweek in 2023 with a second-place award for customer service among online retailers of children’s clothing and products.

“We wouldn’t have achieved that recognition without Bigleaf,” Tony said.

Get valuable tips directly from Tony Velasco of Hanna Andersson in a fireside chat hosted by Bigleaf CMO, Lori Stout.

[Solution brief] What does downtime cost your business?

Bigleaf Networks — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 19:24:45 +0000

The cost of internet downtime can vary widely. But when your business success depends on cloud-based applications and services, downtime can lead to lost revenue, lost productivity, and damage to your company’s reputation. Learn more about the true costs of downtime and then assess your company’s specific risk with the Bigleaf cost of downtime calculator.

What does downtime cost your business?

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[Infographic] What does internet downtime cost your business?

Bigleaf Networks — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 18:36:57 +0000

The cost of downtime could be higher than you realize. Lost revenues, lost productivity, and damage to your company’s reputation can add up, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour of downtime. See the latest stats in this infographic, then discover your own company’s risks with Bigleaf’s cost of downtime calculator.

Download infographic

How to avoid internet brownouts

Amy Chan — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 22:08:20 +0000

You have a high-bandwidth line for your business internet, and it comes with a service level agreement (SLA) that promises consistent uptime. You’re all set. Right?

Not necessarily. Even when your network uptime satisfies the SLA, you can still have circuit performance problems that are bad enough to derail your cloud-based applications. Technically that’s uptime, but it’s pretty much unusable. And because the circuit is still live, the underlying issues may not even be recognized by the ISP, or even the IT team, and the brownout won’t trigger failover protocols built into most firewalls.

Internet brownouts hurt your business

Unusable internet uptime is like a brownout on the electrical grid. It’s not a full blackout, and your connection is live, but service can be intermittent or too weak to support normal activities. In an internet brownout, your connection can be disrupted by jitter, packet loss, latency, or all three. This can happen for any number of reasons, in peak and off-peak hours. And just as high-energy appliances are most affected during an electrical brownout, your users will notice the poor performance first in the most demanding, time-sensitive cloud-based applications.

During a brownout, your employees’ VoIP calls, videoconferences, and other sensitive, session-based interactions can be interrupted by choppy audio, frozen video frames, and dropped data packets. Customers can’t complete transactions on your website or at your point-of-sale kiosks, and they abandon their virtual or physical shopping carts in frustration. Brownouts are often intermittent, so many users won’t think to complain about them, making it even tougher for IT to detect and investigate the underlying causes.

Unusable uptime averages 573 hours per year

Brownouts are more frequent than you might realize. While monitoring thousands of circuits, Bigleaf discovered that those connections were unable to run business-critical applications properly for an average of 573 hours per year. Add another 31 hours per year of actual downtime, and you have an average of 604 hours per year – representing more than 29% of normal business hours – when your network is hobbled by unusable uptime, brownouts, or worse.

What can you do to prevent brownouts?

The easiest way to keep internet brownouts from hurting your business is to adopt Bigleaf’s network optimization solution. Bigleaf customers don’t experience brownouts. In fact, they rarely notice when their internet connections are slow or choppy. That’s because Bigleaf manages their network traffic automatically, to deliver optimal application performance.

Don’t have Bigleaf yet? Schedule a free demo.

Until you install Bigleaf, here are a few steps you can take to manage the risk of brownouts:

Track unusable uptime. Set a threshold for acceptable network health or use the Bigleaf’s definition: less than 2% packet loss, less than 60 ms of jitter, and less than 100 ms of roundtrip latency. Then monitor your circuits and keep track of the unusable uptime. If you don’t have the right tools to monitor and measure circuit performance, Bigleaf can help.

Failover to a backup circuit. You may already have a backup circuit and a failover process. If not, you should set that up right away. However, most failovers don’t kick in unless the circuit is completely down. Your best bet is to deploy a Bigleaf network optimization solution that will identify subpar circuit performance and redirect traffic to a better connection automatically, initiating an undetectable failover that doesn’t require a change in the IP address.

Inform your ISP. Gather detailed information about the brownout – its causes, duration, and characteristics – and contact your ISP with the specifics. This data is easy to find in the Bigleaf Web Dashboard, and it can help the ISP to diagnose and solve the problem.

Know your costs. Brownouts and downtime can be expensive. Your company stands to lose revenue, your employees will lose time and productivity, and you may need to spend even more time and money to recover data, repair or replace hardware, and upgrade software to prevent a recurrence. Intangible costs can include damage to your company’s reputation and relationships with customers and business partners.

Add up your costs with Bigleaf’s downtime calculator.

What is the true cost of internet downtime?

Amy Chan — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:29:34 +0000

Internet downtime can be a huge source of aggravation for any business. Cloud-based applications are unavailable, and employees can’t do their work. The IT team is overwhelmed with support calls.

Even a partial outage or brownout can affect time-sensitive, session-based activities. VoIP calls drop, customers can’t complete their online purchases, and videoconference participants start to look and sound unprofessional during their most important meetings.

Discover your company’s total cost of downtime with Bigleaf’s online calculator.

How can you prevent disruptions due to internet outages and brownouts?

Learn about the costs and risks of internet downtime – as well as unusable uptime – from a seasoned IT pro, when you join Bigleaf in a fireside chat on Wednesday, March 8, with guest Tony Velasco, Director of Infrastructure and Operations at Hanna Andersson, a top manufacturer of children’s apparel.

Tony will provide a view from the trenches, including valuable tips that saved Hanna Andersson thousands of dollars per minute and helped them earn a prestigious Newsweek award for outstanding customer service. And he’ll explain how his company has eliminated the risk of future internet outages, protecting revenue and productivity.

Together with Bigleaf CMO Lori Stout, Tony will also reveal the best practices that support optimal performance of the company’s e-commerce operations and other critical, internet-dependent applications and services.

Watch the fireside chat with Tony and Lori.

Guiding your business up the internet maturity path

Amy Chan — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:33:57 +0000

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) spend almost $200 billion per year on new digital and cloud technologies, to improve efficiency, accelerate growth, and enhance employee and customer experience. For these businesses, internet connectivity is no longer a “best-effort” utility. It’s now a strategic business imperative.

Fortunately, the SMB IT community is stepping up their game with a whole new approach to internet connectivity, with new strategies and technologies that deliver the internet performance and reliability their businesses need now.

Bigleaf Networks designed the Internet Maturity Model as a guide for SMBs that need to deliver new levels of internet performance and reliability for their own users. The model describes four stages of maturity that align with the needs of the SMB and support increased adoption of digital and cloud technologies.

Each stage represents a tradeoff among cost, reliability, and speed factors—enabling SMBs to find the right balance.

Stage 0: Single circuit

Let’s assume that every business reading this article has an internet connection. So, we debated whether to include single-circuit arrangements as part of the maturity model. It might be like saying that learning to walk is the first step in becoming an Olympic athlete. In other words, not a helpful or meaningful use of time. (Note: If you feel differently, let us know! We’re always looking to improve the model.)

Still, most folks we talk to have at least a passive backup. So, we’re going to start the official maturity model with…

Stage 1: Basic disaster recovery

Almost every business today relies on an Internet connection to operate some part of their business: phones, Zoom, MS Teams, CRM, etc. So, they need some way to keep running when major outages hit. The most basic way to provide this is Stage 1: Basic disaster recovery.

In this stage, the business has installed a second internet connection, preferably through a different provider and medium, that can be used when the primary is down for extended periods of time. That second circuit is typically integrated using a firewall or router that uses a ping to determine when the primary connection goes down, and that up/down monitoring issues an alert when there’s an outage. When an outage lasts long enough, all business traffic is moved, either manually or automatically, to the backup circuit.

The benefit of this approach is its simplicity and relatively low cost. The business likely has a firewall in place to manage the failover, and low-cost backups are widely available in most markets. But that simplicity comes at a cost.

Basic failover occurs only when the internet is completely down. But poor performance, brownouts and mini-outages continue to disrupt business connectivity even more often than full outages. And when failover does occur, all IP-specific traffic and services need to be reconnected using the IP address of the backup circuit. This can be a time-consuming process sometimes. Plus, the business has to constantly pay for an internet connection that it hopes never to use.

Stage 1 is ideal for businesses that are okay with several internet disruptions per month and just need to know that they won’t be down for days at a time. When users start complaining about performance-related issues that failover can’t solve, IT or the MSP go to work and move on to…

Stage 2: Complaint response

At some point, regular internet disruptions start becoming regular business disruptions. When that happens, IT starts hearing complaints. Sales and support complain that their calls are dropping or choppy. Management complains that video conferences are constantly cutting in and out. Critical SaaS applications like CRM, ERP, and collaboration tools just don’t work as well as they should. IT needs to respond, leading to a stage we call “complaint response.”

Companies in the complaint response stage know that users are unhappy. They know it needs to be fixed. And they feel responsible to solve it themselves.

So internal IT teams or MSPs set to work, with mostly manual tools and their own effort. They dig into the traditional toolbox—SNMP, PRTG, Zabbix, Graphana (for graphing data), Graylog, Netflow/sFlow tools, etc…

Complaint response also involves a fair amount of time talking to vendor and ISP support teams to find out if the issues originate on their end. More advanced teams might even use their own automated traceroute, MTR, or other hop-by-hop network tools to find issues along the path.

With enough work, the complaint-response approach can usually narrow down the potential issues. It might even lead to some best-guess solutions that can reduce the likelihood of complaints, like upgrading ISPs, implementing more advanced traffic handling in the firewall.

Ultimately, though, these solutions rely on manual response before issues can be addressed. As a result, performance and outage issues continue to recur.

Stage 2 may work for companies that can deal with regular, but shorter, disruptions and that have enough IT staff time available to monitor and react to issues. Once the business impact of these regular issues can impact productivity and customer experience, IT and MSPs need to get proactive and embrace…

Stage 3: Strategic alignment

Stage 3 is when we at Bigleaf typically meet folks on their journey.

Sometimes IT or the MSP proactively embrace strategic alignment before deploying a new technology, like VoIP phones, SaaS-based ERP/CRM, or a new cloud-based call center. More often than not, though, businesses are pushed into Stage 3 after spending way too long dealing with complaints in Stage 2.

When the Stage 2 reactive approach falls short, pressure starts building from the C-suite. Sales teams can’t make calls, support teams can’t keep customers happy, entire call centers are down for minutes at a time, doctors can’t access patient records. The moment that business managers can attribute poor team performance to poor internet performance, the company’s internet becomes a strategic imperative. “Good enough” just isn’t good enough anymore. So, IT starts getting out ahead of the problem in Stage 3: strategic alignment.

By the time a business gets to Stage 3, IT or the MSP has usually tried the standard fixes already—more bandwidth, failover, firewall-based tools. Now they’re exploring new ideas and technologies.

This stage starts with a deep dive into the business’ needs. Which applications/technologies are most important? What kind of uptime/reliability does the business need? What are they willing to spend to get it? For many businesses, the internet connection has been seen as a simple utility up to this point. Many realize that they’re severely underspending on connectivity relative to its importance to the business. That opens the door to options IT may not have considered.

For context, the average internet disruption costs a small to midsize company $137 to $427 per minute according to a recent “cost of downtime” study by IDC for Carbonite. That study also indicated that downtime costs ranged between $82,200 and $256,000 for a single incident. Compared with that, an extra $6k-$12k per year site for reliable internet infrastructure is an easy ROI calculation.

With additional budget approved, IT or the MSP needs a way to see and control the business’ entire internet footprint across all their ISPs and applications. Traditionally, they may have used disparate tools to accomplish this. More recently, third-party overlay platforms like Bigleaf allow for this level of visibility and control from a single platform.

Regardless of which approach you choose, this platform should ideally be able to move traffic between circuits without changing the IP address so calls and other session-based traffic won’t drop when moving between circuits. It will also need a backbone network that can manage your traffic across the entire internet path.

Next, that platform has to be configured. Different kinds of traffic need to be identified, prioritized and load-balanced between your different internet circuits. This can be done manually with policies in more traditional systems. But most companies we work with at this stage prefer an automated system that uses AI to detect and resolve issues. By leveraging the AI instead of manual policies, the system can reconfigure on the fly to adapt to any new applications or circuit issues. This means almost no disruptions with almost no work needed, a real win-win.

Stage 3 is where most businesses who rely on internet-based technologies should be. At this point, IT is providing true 99.99% performant uptime. Where AI is used, that uptime is maintained without any additional work no matter what new technologies are deployed. Frankly, what else could a business want?

I’m glad you asked…

Stage 4: Innovation alignment

Once businesses have the reliability and performance of Stage 3, they often start innovating faster and more frequently. With reliable connectivity, the barrier to adoption for new cloud and internet-based technologies drops considerably. This speed and innovation can be a huge competitive advantage for a small or medium-sized business, but it means that IT needs to get farther ahead of the connectivity needs.

Stage 4 is about ensuring that connectivity never slows down innovation. When IT reaches “innovation alignment,” they’re using data to predict the needs of the business 6-18 months in the future so that updates can be made before their needed.

To do this, IT must start using their available data to build predictive models. For instance, if the historical throughput of voice/video data per user is known, IT can use that data to add the appropriate capacity when hiring a new sales team. If the business wants to deploy a new interactive collaboration tool for their remote offices, they can look back at that office’s performance metrics to determine if a higher-quality or additional circuit is required.

At this point, a business may also hire full-time staff to manage internet operations, or at least make it an official part of someone’s job.

For many businesses, this innovation alignment is still aspirational. But getting there can have a dramatic impact on the speed of innovation. Ultimately, isn’t that what the internet is for?

Find the right internet maturity model for your business

There’s no question that you’ll spend more on your internet connectivity as you move up the internet maturity path. Even though most businesses want to deliver Stage 3-level reliability, they’re stuck asking “is it worth it?” Bigleaf’s team has worked with thousands of SMBs to answer that very question, and more and more of them are saying “yes!”

Today’s SMBs rely more on their internet connectivity than ever. If you’re looking to move up the internet maturity path, or if you’re just curious about what the next stage might look like for your business, request a 30-minute assessment today. Bigleaf Networks is here to help.

Why uptime is critical for healthcare and how to increase yours

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 04:13:00 +0000

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Introducing proactive troubleshooting

Amy Chan — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:35:00 +0000

We’ve all been there. You know there’s an issue on your ISP’s end or with one of your application vendors, but when you contact them you get the equivalent of a “Did you try turning it off and back on?” — even if you show them some tests you ran from the command line. With our new network troubleshooting feature, we’ll give you the tools to make those conversations less frustrating and more productive.

As a Bigleaf Networks customer, you can now run these network tests right from your Bigleaf web dashboard. This will give you a faster, more accurate way to troubleshoot network and application performance issues using trusted third-party data from Bigleaf. You can use that data to be proactive before talking with your team, customers, ISPs, application vendors, or Bigleaf support.

3 network performance tests

You can run three different tests from the new troubleshooting section:

Ping: With a ping test, you can identify where you want a set of packets to be transmitted to and Bigleaf will tell you how long the trip takes. It’s a good way to determine if there’s something in that path that’s causing a problem.
MTR: A My Traceroute (MTR) test traces the route the network packets take along a given path to a specific end point. Whereas the ping test is point to point, the MTR test identifies all the stops a packet takes along the way. MTR gives you the ability to pinpoint individual devices that might be causing a problem.
TCPdump: This more advanced test captures all the TCP/IP packets that are transmitted between the network and a Bigleaf router, to identify any traffic abnormalities.

Here’s an example of what you’ll get what you run an MTR test through Bigleaf:

Why you’ll want to run tests with Bigleaf

There are a lot of factors that can make a network unreliable or cause performance issues. Identifying what causes those issues is often challenging because traffic may be handled by different players in the stream, and that can make the test data unreliable. Because Bigleaf owns and operates the backbone — the Bigleaf Cloud Access Network — and our own gateway clusters, we’re able to ensure the most accurate, objective results.

You can also run some of these tests from the command line or ask Bigleaf’s support team to run them for you, but many of our customers and partners — especially managed service providers (MSPs) — wanted a fast, easy, and reliable test that improves on their previous efforts. We built the new troubleshooting feature in your Bigleaf web dashboard to help make that process a bit easier.

What do you think of this troubleshooting feature or other aspects of the Bigleaf solution? Please share your ideas with us in an email to product@bigleaf.net.

Creating a resilient network: Q&A with Lionakis IT Director Matthew Onken

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:59:00 +0000

In today’s environment, having a dependable, resilient network with redundancies and prioritization is a “no-brainer”. We sat down for a fireside chat with Matthew Onken, IT Director for Lionakis, a century-old architecture and engineering firm in Sacramento, CA. Onken researched and implemented a network continuity solution and justified the investment to the Lionakis management team. Onken offers insider tips and insights into the hidden benefits of dashboards and network visibility.

[Case study] Bigleaf revives toymaker’s cloud reliability

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:24:00 +0000

Learn how Bigleaf helped toy manufacturer and distributor OzWest to create a stable Internet connection that ensures streamlined warehouse operations.

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[Case study] Allen Lund removes network cost and complexity with Bigleaf SD-WAN

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 22:37:00 +0000

Learn how Bigleaf helped solve Allen Lund Company’s connectivity issues so they could have the quality and uptime they needed with the flexibility and cost savings the cloud provided.

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[Case study] New Seasons Market adopts Bigleaf for greater internet reliability and faster connectivity

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 22:27:00 +0000

Learn how Bigleaf SD-WAN gives New Seasons Market employees ‘always-on’ access to all their cloud-based applications across their multiple locations.

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Streamlining HIPAA compliance with a “conduit-exempt” SD-WAN

Amy Chan — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 22:23:16 +0000

If you’re in the healthcare business, or if you provide technology to healthcare businesses, then you’re familiar with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA.) You’ve probably also learned that HIPAA compliance can be complicated and costly. When you start moving patient health information (PHI) to the cloud, it can get even more complicated and costly.

It’s no wonder that businesses, especially those with cloud-based PHI, are always looking for opportunities to streamline their HIPAA compliance requirements. One such opportunity exists around the internet contingency/continuity requirement. Bigleaf’s& cloud-first SD-WAN addresses this while making use of the “conduit exception” to ease the process.

The HIPAA conduit exception makes deploying Bigleaf’s SD-WAN an easy project. But there’s a lot of confusion about the conduit exception, what it means, and why it applies to some vendors like Bigleaf. This post will break it all down for you.

HIPAA, business associate agreements and you

To understand the conduit exception, we need to start by explaining business associate agreements and why they’re so critical to your HIPAA compliance. A business associate agreement (BAA) is a written contract between a covered entity (CE) — that’s you — and a business associate, defined as another vendor or company that works with you.

To maintain your HIPAA compliance, it is required that you maintain a BAA with any business associates that interact with your PHI, and for good reason. Patient records need to be protected and anyone accessing or storing those records needs to be held to the same high standard of privacy and security that you are as the CE.

The penalties for not having a BAA are steep. In fact, a covered entity in Minnesota recently agreed to a $1.55 million fine for not having a BAA in place with one of its business associates. So, we can understand why businesses default to requiring this kind of agreement.

But the onus of these agreements can be costly to both vendors and CEs. Not to mention, it can delay the deployment of new technologies. But the good news is, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHH) identified certain types of vendors that don’t require a BAA. These vendors are covered under the “conduit exception.”

Understanding the conduit exception

The conduit exception was introduced to remove this burden for both CE’s and the vendor where it wasn’t needed. The full text of the conduit exception can be found under Section 160.103 – Definitions:

We do not require a covered entity to enter into a business associate contract with a person or organization that acts merely as a conduit for protected health information (e.g., the US Postal Service, certain private couriers, and their electronic equivalents). A conduit transports information but does not access it other than on a random or infrequent basis as may be necessary for the performance of the transportation service, or as required by law. Since no disclosure is intended by the covered entity and the probability of exposure of any particular protected health information to a conduit is very small, we do not consider a conduit to be a business associate of the covered entity.

This exception means that services you use to simply transport PHI from, say, your office to another server or cloud service are not considered as business associates and therefore do not require a BAA. Simple, right? Well there’s some nuance.

When does a vendor meet the conduit exception?

The DHH has some great guidance on the subject of the conduit exception. According to an FAQ on their website

As explained in previous guidance,[14] the conduit exception is limited to transmission-only services for PHI (whether in electronic or paper form), including any temporary storage of PHI incident to such transmission. Any access to PHI by a conduit is only transient in nature.

To ensure that a vendor like Bigleaf satisfies the conditions for the conduit exception, there are two qualifications that you should look for.

1) The service must be “transient”

The conduit exception applies to things like internet connections and roads that are “transient” in nature relative to the PHI in question. That means that the vendor cannot store persistent copies of the data as a part of the service offering, whether or not the data is encrypted. For instance, when you mail something to a patient, PHI is technically traversing the road but information in the letter is never stored or recorded anywhere along the way.

Likewise, Bigleaf accepts encrypted data from your network and transmits it to our PoPs where the data is handed off, still-encrypted, to your cloud application. Bigleaf doesn’t offer persistent storage of files or other data.

2) The service must not have access to decrypt the data in transit

To meet the conduit exception a vendor must not have access to the encryption key used to secure and open the data “package.” This restriction may rule out an SD-WAN that also provides firewall functionality, as the system could potentially be able to decrypt PHI in transit (if the PHI is not first encrypted by the application).

Bigleaf, on the other hand, sits outside of the firewall and operates independently of any security or encryption that’s provided by the application and/or VPN.

Look for a proven solution

With so much at stake, it never makes sense to gamble with HIPAA compliance. When considering whether a vendor meets the conduit exemption, always ask for references or case studies. We also recommend consulting with your attorney. To learn more about Bigleaf’s role as a conduit, read our partner interview on “Simplifying HIPAA compliance for healthcare providers.”

To learn more about SD-WAN and HIPAA compliance, and how Bigleaf can help, schedule a demo today.

Busting the fiber myth: It’s not the “silver bullet” of internet connections

Amy Chan — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 16:29:00 +0000

For decades, we’ve been conditioned to believe that fiber internet is something of a silver bullet. When a business has internet performance issues, they’ll commonly get the question, “What do you expect when you don’t have fiber?” So, it’s no surprise that folks ask us quite often whether Bigleaf customers still use our service after moving to fiber.

Spoilers: The answer is a big “yes.” In fact, 39% of the circuits currently used by Bigleaf customers are fiber. But since we monitor all our customers’ internet circuits 10x/second for outages and performance degradation, we thought we’d dig into all that data in aggregate to see exactly how reliable fiber internet really is and how much Bigleaf can actually help.

For this analysis, we’re focusing on fiber internet performance relative to performance-sensitive cloud applications like VoIP or UCaaS. Specifically, we looked at every fiber connection that Bigleaf monitored in the month of September and took the mean (filtered for outliers) of each of the following metrics:

Downtime (mins) – The connection is completely unavailable.
Unusable uptime (mins) – The connection performance (packet loss, jitter and latency) is so bad that something like a VoIP call could not sustain a connection.
Degraded uptime (mins) – The connection performance is bad enough that performance-sensitive applications would be affected (e.g. calls would be choppy, echoey or robotic).
QoS Adjustments – Number of times that Bigleaf algorithms had to reduce effective circuit throughput to because the carrier-rated circuit speeds were not being delivered fully and cleanly. These adaptations were required to ensure that sensitive traffic was prioritized, providing proper application performance.

The resulting data was a little surprising, even to us. Here’s what we learned.

Fiber makes up almost 40% of the circuits used by Bigleaf customers

This wasn’t surprising to us as fiber is a wildly popular option for business internet. Many of our customers will use fiber with a less expensive cable or DSL line that can be utilized for commodity bandwidth and failover.

That begged the question: for those with fiber lines, how often was a second circuit needed to handle failover? Turns out that…

Fiber connections had over an hour of downtime per month on average

This didn’t seem right, so we checked the data twice. Across all our customers’ fiber lines, even after filtering out those that were down for days at a time, there was an average of 62.92 minutes of outage time during the month of September.

It’s important to note that those 62.92 minutes were very likely in small increments of a few seconds or minutes. If someone was downloading a file during an outage like that, it might resume eventually. But if a sales rep was on a VoIP call during one of those outages, the call would drop. If we assume an average of 10 seconds per outage, that would mean that a company using VoIP over fiber risks as many as 372 dropped calls per month.

But at least fiber circuits are reliable when they’re up, right? Well…

Fiber connections were unusable for an additional 50+ minutes per month

Beyond the hour of total downtime, the average fiber line experienced another 50.6 minutes per month where the circuit was live, but performance (packet loss, jitter, and latency) were so bad that a performance-sensitive application like VoIP wouldn’t be able to run.

This is almost as bad as having a dead circuit, but with one added challenge… if you’re using a dual-WAN firewall for failover, it would still see this circuit as live and it wouldn’t fail over. This means that, in order to get your calls and applications back up and running, you’d either need to manually change to another circuit or use an SD-WAN like Bigleaf with a second circuit to fail over seamlessly.

So we’re up to almost 2 hours of application downtime per month on the average fiber circuit. What else could go wrong? Sooo…

Fiber connections experience almost 9 hours of degraded performance each month

Beyond being effectively down for an hour and 50 minutes per month, we measured an additional 531 minutes (about 8.9 hours) of time when packet loss, jitter, latency and throughput were bad enough to affect application quality.

For someone who relies on a VoIP phone to do their job, that would translate to 8.9 hours of choppy or echo-y calls. Not a great look for their company.

The situation would be even worse if Bigleaf wasn’t able to correct for circuits where the rated speeds don’t match the actual speeds…

Bigleaf performed an average of 222 QoS speed adjustments on fiber circuits

Bigleaf automatically detects and prioritizes performance-sensitive traffic like VoIP, UCaaS, CCaaS, remote desktop, etc.. For any application prioritization to work, network devices must know how fast the circuits are that traffic is flowing through. Bigleaf’s patent-pending Dynamic QoS detects variance in circuit speeds in real-time, and adjust automatically, ensuring real QoS control over the highly-variable internet. Each time our algorithms detect that the circuit isn’t delivering the rated speed, our systems perform a QoS adjustment to adapt to that and protect traffic.

Since we’re up to an average of over 10 hours of downtime or degraded performance per month over fiber, it’s no surprise that Bigleaf is making an average 222 QoS adjustments per month on those same fiber lines. Those connections simply don’t deliver their rated bandwidth at all times.

In other words…

Moving to fiber internet isn’t a silver bullet for your internet performance issues

That’s not to say that fiber won’t be an improvement over your existing ISP. Clearly, a lot of Bigleaf customers use and stick with fiber as their primary internet circuit.

But if your goal is to guarantee uptime and performance for your company’s applications, fiber may be a disappointment. There’s no one perfect internet circuit type currently available. In fact, our data shows that fiber is really no better than several other circuit types when it comes to outages. That’s why so many businesses rely on Bigleaf to leverage multiple circuits to create a dynamic, intelligent, active/active connection to the applications they rely on.

We hope this data was helpful. If you have any internet performance-related questions, let us know and we can blog about that. To see how Bigleaf can help you with your own internet outages and performance challenges, contact us today for a consultation or free 30-day trial.