We love our senior citizens; they’re survivors! And with 88%¹ of older adults now using the internet to stay in touch with loved ones, access healthcare services, and engage in social activities, high-speed connectivity in senior living communities is more important than ever. Some, including us, would even go so far as to say that connectivity is now a basic right. 

So, let’s talk about it! Assisted living facilities are evolving, led by increased connectivity, and we at Bigleaf are honored to be playing a part in ensuring this connectivity for residents, staff, and caregivers alike. 

The Rise of Tech-Enabled Senior Living 

There are several technology trends that are becoming particularly influential in driving the demand for robust internet solutions in assisted living facilities, but primarily: 

1. Telehealth and Remote Monitoring: As more healthcare providers offer virtual consultations and remote monitoring, assisted living facilities require seamless internet connections to ensure that residents can access timely medical care without disruptions. 
2. Smart Home Devices: Devices like smart thermostats, lighting systems, and security cameras are becoming common in senior living communities, not to mention individual tracking devices in certain cases. These technologies improve safety and convenience but also depend on consistent connectivity to operate effectively. 
3. Digital Communication Platforms: With many residents relying on video calls and social media to stay connected with loved ones, a reliable internet connection is essential to maintaining these important relationships. 

Additionally, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are both gaining traction in assisted living environments, emerging as tools for both cognitive therapy and social interaction. VR and AR applications and immersive experiences require high-bandwidth, low-latency connections to function properly. Have you seen Ready Player One? It won’t be long before we’ll be able to visit our loved ones in assisted living facilities in the real-world equivalent of The Oasis. 

The Importance of Connectivity 

There are so many reasons that reliable internet connectivity now plays a crucial role in assisted living facilities. From fostering a sense of community among residents and keeping them in touch with loved ones through social media, video calls, and online activities, to supporting health and wellness via telehealth services, to ensuring that health monitoring and emergency services are uninterrupted; all of this is contingent upon seamless and uninterrupted network connectivity. 

Looking to the future, while there’s no way to know for certain what may come (except, of course, for The Oasis), connectivity will continue to drive innovation and remain a key component in senior living.  

Our Commitment 

Here at Bigleaf, we’re committed to futureproofing assisted living facilities by providing robust, scalable connectivity solutions that prepare them for the next wave of technological advancements. From network optimization to 5G wireless, our feature-rich solutions ensure uninterrupted and reliable connectivity for your business (and your loved ones). And our newly launched Cloud Connect delivers even more visibility into your network circuits and health. 

If you’re ready to learn more about Bigleaf, request a demo today! 

¹Internet Use Climbs Among Older Adults – Marketing Charts  

The next generation of Web Dashboard has arrived, Bigleaf Cloud Connect delivers a new level of visibility and control into and over not just your wired and wireless circuits but also your entire cloud-connected infrastructure.

Designed from the ground up to be incredibly powerful and intuitive to use, Cloud Connect upholds our commitment to effective simplicity — keeping you informed of when things change, when things need attention, and what to do to ensure uninterrupted and reliable performance for all your cloud connected applications and devices — making it indispensable for any modern, cloud network-dependent business.

Created by us, for you… with your help!

We did extensive testing and research with partners and customers to identify and solve specific pain points. We’ve simplified navigation and site management across multiple locations, expanded visibility into network health and site conditions, and introduced advanced analytical tools to more effectively pinpoint problems and facilitate expedited resolutions. 

We’ve also vastly improved performance, access security, and overall user experience. Additionally, with our new architecture we are better prepared to deliver new functionality more efficiently. Cloud Connect is built to meet your growing business needs while reflecting our commitment to delivering powerful and easy-to-use solutions to optimize network connectivity and performance. Features include:

• Global and multi-site view: A Network Operations Center (NOC)-inspired interface that provides a bird’s-eye view of your entire network infrastructure, regardless of location. 
• More at-a-glance real-time metrics and data: Enables quick insights, real-time monitoring, and performance indicators for rapid decision-making and immediate action. 
• Advanced filtering, search, and sorting tools: Quickly pinpoint specific data and uncover valuable insights to optimize your network performance. 
• Enhanced Security: Protect your sensitive network data with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and other robust security features. 
• User-Friendly Interface: A streamlined design that prioritizes ease of use, with intuitive navigation and self-help resources for a seamless user experience. 
• Intuitive self-help resources: Helpful user support is at your fingertips, increasing your operational efficiency.  
• Markedly Improved Performance: Experience faster page load times and a more responsive dashboard for a truly efficient workflow. 

Are you ready for Cloud Connect?

You can log in and see for yourself right now! Cloud Connect is now live for all Bigleaf customers. What are you waiting for? Log in and have a look around!

For a more in-depth look at everything Cloud Connect has to offer, register now to join our special Cloud Connect edition of Bigleaf Bootcamp!

As a final quick note, through the end of this year all existing users will have the option of toggling between Cloud Connect and Web Dashboard just in case you’d prefer to delay your transition. We do encourage you to jump right in with Cloud Connect though, as we’re confident you’re going to love it.

Welcome to the new era of network optimization, wireless connectivity, and circuit management! Your business relies on the internet. Your internet relies on Bigleaf.

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! 

In the world of managed services, standing out means staying ahead. For Managed Service Providers looking to offer more than just a service – aiming to become a trusted advisor for their clients – the adoption of an SD-WAN solution is not just innovative; it’s imperative. Bigleaf Networks’ SD-WAN is more than a solution; it’s a partnership that propels both providers and their clients towards success.

A Transformative Leap: Why SD-WAN Matters for Service Providers

Gone are the days when traditional WAN could meet all the needs of growing businesses. In the fast-paced digital arena, Managed Technology Service Providers require a network solution that’s as agile and adaptable as the companies they support. Bigleaf’s SD-WAN is that evolutionary leap forward, ensuring that you can offer a network that bends without breaking.

Tailored Benefits: Bigleaf’s SD-WAN for Your Portfolio

When Technology Service Providers integrate Bigleaf’s SD-WAN into their offerings, they unlock a suite of advantages: improved bandwidth, enhanced application performance, and the agility to meet the demands of any client network environment. It’s the tool that turns complexity into simplicity, and challenges into opportunities.

Success in Action: Bigleaf’s SD-WAN Solution at Work

Real-world impact trumps all. Whether it’s streamlining operations across multiple client sites or seamlessly integrating cloud services, IT Service Management Companies empowered by Bigleaf’s SD-WAN aren’t just meeting expectations; they’re exceeding them. Through our success stories, witness the transformative effects of SD-WAN in the managed services realm.

Standout Features That Give You the Edge

What makes Bigleaf’s SD-WAN a game-changer for MSPs? Consider these key features and benefits:

• Dynamic QoS: Prioritize critical applications and ensure optimal performance across the network.
• Unparalleled IP Failover: Maintain continuous connectivity even in the event of a primary link failure.
• Insightful Traffic Intelligence: Gain valuable insights into network traffic patterns to optimize performance and security.
• Zero-Touch Installation: Seamlessly integrate our SD-WAN solution into existing networks with minimal disruption.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Adapt to changing business needs and scale your network infrastructure effortlessly.

This isn’t just technology; it’s the foundation for next-level managed services.

Effortless Integration: Bigleaf’s Promise to Partners

Offering an SD-WAN solution should be as smooth as the network it provides. That’s why Bigleaf’s zero-touch installation is a breath of fresh air. No disruptions, no downtime – just a sleek, efficient transition that adds immediate value to your services.

Fostering Growth: Bigleaf & MSPs Together

For Managed Service Providers, choosing Bigleaf’s SD-WAN is an investment in growth. It’s the decision to not just keep pace with the future but to define it. With Bigleaf, you’re not just adapting to change; you’re driving it.

In Conclusion: Elevating Managed Services

As MSPs, you are the navigators of the business technology landscape, and in a world wired for speed, your choice of networking solution can make all the difference. With Bigleaf’s SD-WAN, watch your offerings, and your clients’ businesses, soar.

The Invitation: Transform Your Managed Services as a Bigleaf Partner

Eager to expand your managed services with a robust SD-WAN solution? Discover the full potential of what you can offer with Bigleaf. Learn more here or reach out to see our SD-WAN in action. Your strategic advantage is just a conversation away.

Become a Partner Today

Understanding Quality of Service (QoS).

Before we dive into Dynamic QoS, at its core, Quality of Service (QoS) is a technology designed to manage network traffic effectively. It prioritizes essential applications over less critical ones, ensuring that important network activities, like video calls, receive precedence over lower-priority tasks, such as streaming videos on Netflix.

Goals of QoS

• • Reduce Packet Loss: Ensures data packets reach their destination reliably.

• • Minimize Latency: Decreases the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction.

• • Eliminate Jitter: Avoids variations in packet delay at the receiving end, important for quality in real-time communication

The Evolution of Dynamic QoS

Traditional QoS systems operate on predetermined rules that allocate bandwidth to prioritized applications and create virtual queues for data packets. This method follows a basic first-in-first-out principle, where bandwidth is reserved for prioritized traffic.

Transition from Tradition:

• Dynamic QoS transcends these limitations by utilizing intelligent software to monitor and adjust traffic rules dynamically for optimized performance. Here’s how Bigleaf elevates this process:
• Intelligent Identification: Bigleaf identifies application traffic dynamically.
• Real-time Adjustment: Continuously adjusts QoS policies based on current network conditions to ensure high-priority traffic like VoIP, SSH, and Remote Desktop is not hindered by ISP congestion.

The Business Case for Dynamic QoS

Without effective QoS, network traffic can become chaotic, akin to rush-hour traffic with non-functioning traffic lights, leading to significant performance degradation. Bigleaf automates the identification and prioritization of traffic, eliminating the need for constant manual monitoring.

Benefits for your business:

1. Enhanced Productivity: Optimizes latency, allowing employees to remain productive and focused.
2. Improved Reliability: Prevents disruptions in VoIP calls, video conferences, and VPN sessions, ensuring smooth, reliable communication.
3. Cost Efficiency: Rather than upgrading to more expensive internet lines, Dynamic QoS provides a cost-effective solution by better managing existing bandwidth.

Optimizing Internet Performance with Bigleaf Networks

Many businesses attempt to improve slow internet speeds by increasing their service plans. However, Bigleaf Networks proposes a more strategic approach through Dynamic QoS, which ensures that cloud and SaaS applications perform optimally, regardless of the internet provider or location.

Bigleaf’s Dynamic QoS:

As part of our comprehensive SD-WAN solution, Bigleaf offers AI-powered Dynamic QoS to support businesses reliant on stable and reliable internet connectivity across all applications and locations.

Learn More and Get Started

Discover more about how Dynamic QoS can transform your business network for better efficiency and performance:

• Request a Demo from Bigleaf Networks

By leveraging Bigleaf’s Dynamic QoS, you can ensure that your business not only keeps pace with modern demands but also maximizes its technological investments

Not so very long ago, we all commuted to and from our offices every day for work, there were cars and traffic and freeways involved. Of course, then 2020 happened and suddenly we all worked remotely and began just commuting down the hallway of our own home instead of down the freeway.  As we enter 2024, hybrid work environments have become more and more common. Many of us now commute down the freeway two or three days each week and down our own hallway the rest of the week. 

While hybrid work is great for things like work/life balance, it presents certain challenges when it comes to basic connectivity. After all, your home internet connection isn’t the same as your office internet connection, and with many of us taking meetings via Zoom or Teams or Slack all day, internet connectivity, stability, reliability, and redundancy have become more important than ever. 

SD-WAN: The Backbone of Modern Workplaces 

At the core of this hybrid work frontier is SD-WAN, or Software-Defined Wide Area Network, which has become the most flexible and efficient solution for modern businesses with distributed networks.  

By separating control functions from physical infrastructure and applying software-defined networking principles, SD-WAN offers increased visibility into network traffic, dynamic path selection for optimal performance, and improved reliability by intelligently rerouting traffic. In other words, SD-WAN makes for a more reliable, stable, and adaptable network as compared to traditional WAN. 

Bigleaf’s Approach to SD-WAN 

By elevating what SD-WAN can be, Bigleaf has become an ideal solution for the intricacies of hybrid work models. For example, Dynamic QoS (Quality of Service) allows you to identify and prioritize certain traffic. What this means is that when you’re working from home you can give the traffic for your Zoom call priority over the kids watching Netflix in the other room, meaning that if there’s a network issue then their TV show might buffer but your video conference will remain crystal clear.  

Another huge benefit Bigleaf provides is Same IP Failover. In other words, you can have one network entirely fail and Bigleaf will switch all traffic to your other network without changing your IP address, meaning no dropped video calls or needing to log back in cloud-based applications, you likely won’t even know a network failure took place. 

These features, and more, add not only to the reliability but also the security of your network, particularly for remote work. Bigleaf also peers directly with over 150 cloud, content, and carrier networks private, direct connections to cloud applications.  

The Future of Hybrid Work 

These past few years have taught us that it really is anyone’s guess what’s right around the next corner. One thing is for certain though: as with life, business will continue to find a way. And business will always require reliable network connectivity. Bigleaf was built to scale right along with your business. From single circuit to multiple circuit to our High Availability solution, Bigleaf can improve your network today and grow with you into tomorrow.  

Whether your business operates in-office, remotely, or hybrid, Bigleaf has an SD-WAN solution to improve and optimize your network connectivity. Learn more today.

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

Businesses rely on vendor relationships more than ever in this era of tight budgets and time-strapped IT teams. For the fourth quarter in a row, Bigleaf is proud to announce that our customers have selected us as a top performer in G2’s SD-WAN category on its software marketplace.

The G2 Winter 2024 Report includes eight new badges for Bigleaf, including those earned by having the highest ratings in their respective categories: Best Relationship, Best Usability, Most Implementable, Best Relationship, and Fastest Implementation. There is no higher compliment than the praise of customers who rely on a solution every day to connect to customers and keep business-critical applications up and running 24/7.

As we prepare to announce new products and features in 2024, customer input and feedback will remain our top priority. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what just one of our customers had to say about their experience:

“Bigleaf is making our life a whole lot easier by taking the worry of consistent high-performance internet away from us. It is amazing how Bigleaf can handle multiple ISPs and determine which connection is best. The biggest gripe I have is not deciding to get the service sooner.”

We could not be more grateful for the thousands of Bigleaf customers who trust us with their internet connectivity every day. We look forward to many more years of partnership and innovation.

If you’d like to see for yourself how Bigleaf can ease your internet worries for good, request a free demo with one of our connectivity experts.

Request a demo today

“I had all my kids back home and we were all quarantining in the same household,” he explained. “Everybody was on Zoom for school and meetings, and I couldn’t even make a phone call.” 

Charlie set up Bigleaf in his home, “and the rest is history,” he said. Ever since then, Charlie, the founder and CEO of San Antonio, TX-based Kinect Communications, has added Bigleaf to every customer quote.  

“I’m a huge believer,” he continued. “I add it for all my customers because they need it. Whether they know it or not, they need it.” 

Charlie credits Bigleaf, along with an LTE cellphone router solution, for a 42% increase in Kinect’s monthly recurring revenue.  

“Bigleaf is phenomenal,” Charlie asserted. “It’s selling like hotcakes, because it works.”  

Charlie’s enthusiastic advocacy led to recognition as a 2022 Top Performer in Bigleaf’s managed service provider (MSP) channel. 

Worry-free failover  

Bigleaf’s Same-IP Failover has saved time, money, and aggravation for Kinect and its customers. In one example, Kinect’s website displays praise from a happy customer, a police department technology manager in the Gulf Coast resort town of Aransas Pass. Thanks to Kinect and Bigleaf, his department’s internet-based services kept running during a major outage that took out network and cell connections. 

“Yesterday, a major fiber line was cut. This took out our primary internet connection along with one of the cell carriers. If it was not for our backup fiber and the SD-WAN solution, we would have lost most of our services. Instead, employees had no idea we had lost our primary connection until they got home and found the internet to be out citywide.” 

– David Offalter, Technology Manager, Aransas Pass Police Department 

Easy to integrate and manage 

As an integrator, Charlie appreciates Bigleaf’s ease of installation and autonomous operation. “There’s very little hands-on. That’s important to me because I don’t have a big staff,” Charlie explained. “So, it’s a huge blessing for me to be able to ship a product [to the customer], plug it in, and it just pulls down that configuration file.” 

Bigleaf’s Dynamic QoS is another key feature that prevents headaches for Charlie and his team at Kinect. It works in concert with Bigleaf’s circuit monitoring and intelligent load balancing to identify and prioritize network traffic automatically, routing each type of traffic to the optimal circuit based on its capability and availability. There’s no need for manual policies, so Kinect can rely on Bigleaf to deliver reliable internet and cloud application performance. 

According to Charlie, his company is held responsible for the customers’ network performance: “Quality of service is a direct reflection on me, whether it’s my problem or not,” he said. “So it’s extremely important to me.” 

Charlie also benefits from Bigleaf’s monthly performance reports, where he can review any outstanding issues across all customer locations.  

“I don’t go through every one of those reports. But the ones that I need are there at my fingertips,” he said. “The report shows up in my inbox, and I don’t have to think about it. It’s nice and convenient.” 

“Phenomenal” product and service 

“The customer service team at Bigleaf really has been phenomenal,” Charlie enthused. 

“When I call, someone answers the phone any time of the day or night. And that means everything to me,” he explained. “Because there are days I wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning and I need to talk to somebody about something that I couldn’t necessarily get to the previous day, an upcoming installation or something.  

Charlie recommends Bigleaf to MSPs, systems integrators, solution providers, and other value-added resellers, to support their customers’ VoIP, UCaaS, and other cloud-based applications and services. 

“Honestly, if you’re looking for a phenomenal product that requires very little effort other than to go out and install it and sell it, this is the SD-WAN solution that I would recommend to anybody,” he said. “And I have, actually, to be quite frank.” 

– Charlie Slaughter, CEO, Kinect Communications, San Antonio, TX 

To learn more about delivering reliable, resilient network performance, schedule a free demo today.

Running Bigleaf on a day-to-day basis today is much different than it was when we were a startup. Our market continues to expand and the opportunity for us to capture our share continues to grow, too. IT organizations, especially those in small to medium size businesses, are stretched thin as they move workloads to cloud environments, secure networks with distributed internet access, securely decommission on-premises or Colo environments and support a geographically distributed user community. More than ever our customers are looking for solutions that make things easier, and we’ve established a consistent track record of delivering on that promise. Our SD-WAN technology and Cloud Gateway infrastructure allows us to stay laser focused on serving as our customers’ Internet and cloud connectivity foundation in a manner that can be easily layered onto any existing security or firewall infrastructure without the need for large scale expensive deployments.

It has been a great privilege to lead Bigleaf and be a part of this amazing company for the last ten years. Our team has accomplished amazing things since we opened the doors back in 2012. Today, we’re opening even bigger doors. The company is stronger than ever. This leadership change positions Bigleaf for the next level of accelerated growth and expansion, a skillset and scale where Greg exceeds. I will continue to serve and be involved on our board of directors and make myself available to Greg and the team.

I am deeply grateful to the people: customers, partners, investors, and community — both past and present — who put their trust in us. I believe there are many exciting things to come!

   Joel

“My firewall can do that.”

That’s a phrase we often hear from IT professionals when we talk about Bigleaf. 

If you’re referring to basic security and disaster recovery, it might be true, in part. After all, firewalls have been the first line of defense in a network for over a quarter-century. A mature network should have a built-in firewall to ensure a certain level of security and many do that also provide a level of redundant connectivity. 

Your setup may look like Stage 1 of the Internet Maturity Model: where you have a dual-wan firewall that allows you to have a second internet connection that can be activated when your primary connection goes down. When your primary connection fails, your business traffic needs to be moved, either manually or automatically, to the backup circuit. 

Seasoned IT pros can spend hours ensuring layers of redundancy are in place, as well as create Quality of Service rules that play nice with existing firewalls and add a level of application performance management. Rudimentary failover strategies, backup circuits, and QoS configurations like those are better than nothing. However, they can come with a variety of weaknesses which we’ll cover below. 

Check out this head-to-head comparison of your standard firewall vs. integrating Bigleaf into your tech stack alongside your existing firewall.

Firewall Limitations & Strengths

Your trusted firewall is important as it provides security and can provide the level of compliance you need. Some also help with connectivity. We’re not here to argue the security point. Instead, we want to make the case that Bigleaf allows organizations to achieve better connectivity and cloud application performance than firewalls.   

Your firewall – whether a Stateful Inspection, UTM, or an NGFW – or your amalgam of them needs to do more than just keep you compliant. They need to be a part of your infrastructure that keeps your business running smoothly in today’s digital landscape (where the cost of downtime & unusable uptime are rising to levels SMBs can’t afford while remaining competitive).

Round 1: Failover

Referencing Stage 1 of the Internet Maturity Model and tying into Round 1, when failover does happen, reconnecting all your business’ IP-specific internet traffic to the backup circuit is not instant. Your firewall can take seconds to minutes to failover. We’ve seen times ranging between 45 seconds to 8 minutes and some require a manual switch. However long it takes, performance is compromised, focus is lost. In the case of real-time VoIP calls, which drop the instant the connection drops, work completely stops. 

Basic Failover only provides support during outages; when the Internet is completely down. However, as seasoned IT professionals know, poor performance, brownouts, smaller outages, and more, disrupt business connectivity more often than complete outages. 

Bigleaf’s Same IP Address Failover seamlessly reroutes all traffic when there are outages and circuit disruptions, constantly keeping every business-critical application working as it should. With Bigleaf, when one of your circuits has any sort of outage, you don’t. Your IP address doesn’t change so your traffic automatically moves to your other circuit. Your VPN, VoIP call, and business-critical apps stay up! 

Yes, Bigleaf saves the call that would otherwise need to be reinitiated. 

Winner: Bigleaf Networks

Round 2: Intelligent Traffic Management

Optimized cloud application performance is traditionally achieved with policies and manual configurations for QoS, traffic flow management across circuits, and failover. While some firewall solutions have tried to make some of this easier with preset selections, there is still a requirement that each policy is manually set. 

Bigleaf’s self-driving AI automatically identifies and prioritizes your application traffic, configures itself to optimize for your circuit conditions and traffic makeup, and instantly adapts to changes in real-time, improving call & video quality and app performance. 

With only a dual-WAN firewall solution in place, even if it advertised SD-WAN capabilities, an IT Manager would need to manually create or set rules for every app they know their users are using. Let’s explain using a real-world example: 

Firewall Only Example 

Given the state of SaaS adoption and different tools that SMBs use nowadays (and because you need to create rules with every app and every user with most dual-WAN firewalls), a company with only 18 employees could need to create over 400  rules for QoS alone. In other words, the simple solution requires more from your IT resources. 

With Bigleaf, circuit monitoring, load balancing, and traffic identification and prioritization happens automatically regardless of how many or what SaaS apps are being used by your team members. 

Winner: Bigleaf Networks

Round 3: Insights 

Lack of awareness of how your internet circuits are performing is a massive threat to an SMBs bottom line. If you don’t know a problem is happening, you can’t fix it. 

We briefly covered Stage 1 of the Internet Maturity Model – where you get a second circuit, plug it into your firewall, learn that an outage has occurred, then manually failover your traffic to the second line. It may seem “good enough” at first glance – it’s simple and low cost. What if we told you the low cost comes at a high one? 

Your firewall may let you know of outages at the time they happen, requiring you to act on the issue at that moment. However, you may not be aware of circuit and traffic performance issues that are consistently happening but seem minor or insignificant in your day-to-day application and internet performance. These issues can go unnoticed and cost you losses in revenue, productivity, user experience, reputation, and more. 

Visibility of your circuit and traffic performance across each of your ISP circuits delivers the insight you need when things change and need attention, and what to do to ensure reliable performance for each of your cloud applications and technologies. When it comes to reporting, Bigleaf edges out. Our Risk Monitoring feature goes above & beyond, taking the aggregate of the health and performance metrics we track and record to isolate critical events that can threaten your business continuity. Each risk alert is designed to give you a clear explanation and path to resolution so it can be resolved.  

Winner: Bigleaf Networks

Champion: Bigleaf by Unanimous Decision

In summary, Bigleaf delivers much more than your firewall in ensuring reliable connectivity and optimal cloud application and Internet performance. We like to say that “having Bigleaf in your network is like having a Network Engineer on staff 24×7, who doesn’t take vacations, need breaks, or is subject to human error.” From Same IP Address Failover and Intelligent Load Balancing to Dynamic QoS and World-Class Support – we’ve got you covered.  

The results indicate that Bigleaf Networks beat your firewall by unanimous decision; but a knockout would be a more accurate conclusion. 

Next time you feel the urge to say, “My Firewall does that,” remember Bigleaf offers:  

• true redundancy 
• end-to-end network and cloud application performance optimization 

• self-correcting network resilience 
• insight that enables problem-solving before users are impacted 

Does your firewall do that?

*Bonus* Firewall-Friendly SD-WAN

If you’re convinced of the value that an SD-WAN solution like Bigleaf’s can bring your business, like it has 100,000 other users, you’ll be pleased to know that Bigleaf is a firewall-friendly solution. Bigleaf installs outside firewalls. So, an organization can use a firewall for the security and compliance it provides AND add on Bigleaf for the same IP-failover, intelligent and automated QoS prioritization, circuit monitoring, and load balancing that delivers above and beyond what most firewalls will ever. – it’s the easiest way to implement SD-WAN.

Wrap Up

If your business or customers use cloud-based and SaaS apps, if you can’t afford to have poor internet connectivity or downtime, have enterprise-grade goals, and you want to focus your IT efforts on strategic business initiatives, then Bigleaf Networks may be the best solution for you. 

Can your firewall really do all this? 

SMBs rely more on their Internet connectivity than ever, and while a firewall has its strengths, good enough is not good enough to improve business continuity and internet performance. If you’re curious to learn more about this topic or Bigleaf in general, request a demo, ping us at sales@bigleaf.net, or check out our other SD-WAN resources. 

Networking is a distinct territory within IT with equally distinct jargon to match. One term you’ve probably heard of is quality of service (QoS) – technology that controls network traffic to ensure the performance of essential applications. 

Although quality of service is not a new concept, QoS and its latest variations are a hot topic regarding today’s SMB IT infrastructure. But what is Dynamic QoS, and how does it work? Is Dynamic QoS necessary for your business continuity and success? 

Read on as we answer your questions, explain its business implications, and show real-world examples of what makes Bigleaf Dynamic QoS technology an absolute game changer for SMBs. 

Let’s dive in.

What Is [Dynamic] QoS and how does it work?

In a nutshell, quality of service is a set of technologies or tools that manage and prioritize network traffic, ensuring the smooth, consistent performance of high-priority and real-time applications & traffic (even with limited internet capacity). 

These days, business applications aren’t only competing with many types of internet traffic; the applications are competing with one another (whether you work from home or a corporate office). While all apps within a network are subject to the consequences of bandwidth issues and poor connection quality, apps with real-time requirements feel the effects fast – think crappy choppy video conferences and VoIP calls. 

Internet disruptions like those aren’t just annoying for your teams and your customers. When meetings are interrupted or sales calls drop, operations are stalled, costing your business revenue, productivity, recovery & more. In fact, according to the latest data from Gartner, the average cost of network downtime or unusable uptime (when your internet is live but unstable) to your business is upwards of $300K per hour.

QoS mitigates these all-too-common connectivity and performance problems by working to reduce the effects of packet loss, latency, and jitter on a network, prioritizing and routing traffic through circuits in a way to best handle that of your business-critical apps such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, RingCentral, and other SaaS and cloud-based tools for VoIP, video conferencing, and video-on-demand.  

To put it simply, you can think of your internet connection as a massive, multi-lane freeway. When the flow of traffic starts to get heavy, QoS is like the carpool and bus-only lanes reserved for your high-priority apps, resolving traffic congestion.

Traditionally, QoS works by prioritizing packets based on manual policy and configuring routers that create separate virtual queues for each application. Bandwidth is reserved for the essential applications or websites that are assigned priority access. A network administrator usually allocates the order in which packets are handled and provides the appropriate level of bandwidth to each app or traffic flow. 

If that sounds tedious and limiting, it’s because it is. 

Plus, traditional solutions can only allocate bandwidth to internet traffic leaving the local network. Everything beyond the LAN is outside its control. So, traditional QoS solutions are helpful but, again, limited, especially in today’s work-from-anywhere business landscape.

Enter Dynamic QoS

Rather than using legacy, first-in-first-out (FIFO) methods, Dynamic QoS helps improve business-critical app performance by improving internet traffic management capabilities via bandwidth allocation and traffic prioritization techniques automatically. Instead of IT leaders or network administrators manually configuring QoS rules into your network, Dynamic QoS auto-adjusts traffic rules using intelligent software. 

When your Dynamic QoS tools and other SD-WAN capabilities work cohesively, the way the health of your internet connection and bandwidth is monitored, managed, and prioritized ensures the silky-smooth performance of your much-needed business applications. 

Whether you’re working in a household of hardcore gamers and streaming services junkies, or in a busy corporate office, Dynamic QoS recognizes and protects the services using minimum bandwidth + require low latency. 

Since Dynamic QoS reduces disruptions caused by problems like downtime, latency, and jitter, your network automatically becomes more cost-effective. So, your business, by default, becomes more productive.

Is Dynamic QoS really beneficial for business?

In a word, yes. Without proper QoS, network data can become disorganized to the point of causing performance degradation or worse. As mentioned above, that’s a $300K per hour problem that most SMBs can’t weather. 

And with Dynamic QoS, the identification and prioritization of traffic happen automatically, in real-time. So, you no longer need to spend time, and use staff or other resources to consistently monitor all the applications your business uses. 

In general, QoS, especially Dynamic QoS, empowers businesses and end-users by ensuring the cloud and internet apps they rely on work optimally. Optimizing latency allows employees to be as productive and focused as possible while keeping users happy: no more dropped VoIP calls, video conferences, or VPN sessions. 

Clearly, the benefits of QoS and its advanced, dynamic variant are integral to a thriving business. But are all services created equal? Not according to more than 100,000 users and counting who rely on Bigleaf Networks to provide them with truly reliable connectivity daily.

Why SMBs choose Bigleaf Dynamic QoS to intelligently prioritize internet traffic

“Bigleaf has architected a new kind of networking platform to deliver end-to-end connectivity to and from anywhere your traffic needs to go.” 

Like other SD-WAN solutions, we do three things here at Bigleaf. We monitor connectivity, route your traffic, and prioritize it. However, the way we do it here uses intelligent software instead of manual policy and configuration work. So, our customers can simply plug into the Bigleaf service and reap the benefits of performant connectivity almost immediately. 

Notably, the way we provide QoS prioritization across the public internet is unique even among other players in our industry. We can adapt to circuit conditions and bidirectionally control traffic over the internet to assure prioritization for your key applications. This means VoIP and video are always smooth, and those business-critical apps stay responsive even if other users in your network are downloading giant files. 

Our Dynamic QoS also works on a single Internet connection. So, you can still enjoy all the prioritization, circuit monitoring, and proactive alerting benefits Bigleaf offers while sticking to one circuit. 

Our self-driving AI approach utilizes Bigleaf Same-IP Failover and our patented Intelligent Load Balancing that all work together with our innovative Dynamic QoS technology to ensure your cloud applications are constantly performing. 

The benefits and use cases of QoS, especially Bigleaf’s AI-driven, Dynamic QoS, are numerous and make implementation worth the investment for your growing business.

Dynamic QoS: You don’t need more speed, just better prioritization

Let’s check out a real-world scenario that may look close to a situation you’d find yourself in. It’s a perfect example of QoS prioritization in action.  

Bigleaf Networks co-founder Joel Mulkey, an IT visionary, offers a quintessential example of the “less is more” approach. 

View Graph A below.  

At Joel’s home, the fastest circuit has about 6 Mbps of download speed. Recently, one of his kids purchased a brand-new video game from the digital distribution service Steam. Notice that the game was downloading during the day, saturating that circuit (red). Yet, throughout the day, that same circuit was the healthiest (in addition to being the fastest). So, our Intelligent Load Balancing placed Joel’s Zoom calls onto the path (green). 

Notice how QoS slows down the lower priority bulk data during those periods, which kept Joel’s Zoom calls perfectly clear. Now that’s how you prioritize traffic on your internet connection, especially one with such limited bandwidth! 

That’s the key value of Bigleaf’s AI-powered Dynamic QoS: it automatically identified the game as a type of traffic that shouldn’t have priority over a business-critical app like Zoom. 

So, there was no need to notify IT of a new app running through his circuit, the team didn’t need to create a new policy, and Joel was able to stay focused and productive, completing his business tasks without distractions.

Now, this was at Joel’s home in the Northwest US. But whether you operate out of a home office or run a multi-site, multi-state enterprise, Bigleaf Networks’ site-to-cloud SD-WAN technology delivers consistency and performance you can count on 

Imagine the same situation at a corporate office, where an employee might get invited to a video conference using an app that IT did not anticipate. Bigleaf Dynamic QoS recognizes that traffic and automatically prioritizes it, just as it would treat other VoIP and video call traffic.    

Find more insights in Bigleaf’s customer success stories.

Dynamic QoS: Optimizing the internet for your business

At Bigleaf, we understand that when it comes to getting work done — no matter what internet provider you’re using, no matter your location, and no matter what kind of organization you run — if you rely on cloud and SaaS applications for business, they need to function optimally. So, we set out to create the most effective Dynamic QoS tools to help deliver the performance you need. 

We provide AI-powered Dynamic QoS as a part of our SD-WAN solution to supercharge businesses throughout the USA and Europe, who need truly reliable internet connectivity for every application, every technology, every user, everywhere — over any ISP. 

Learn how Bigleaf can transform your business for the better by requesting a FREE demo. If you have any questions, send us an email at sales@bigleaf.net.  

As you might expect, SD-WAN played a significant role this year — from helping people stay online and connected throughout the ongoing pandemic, to improving the quality and reliability of cloud-based applications for companies continuing to adapt to hybrid work environments.

Joel also touched on increased urgency companies are putting behind digital transformation initiatives, as well as how innovative technologies like smart AI are becoming a valuable way for MSPs to address the growing skills gap their businesses and customers face.

You can listen to the conversation here or read the transcript below.

Audio Transcript

Mike: So, it’s been a wild year. Let me rephrase that. Another wild year. We thought it’d be good to hear from Bigleaf Networks founder and CEO, Joel Mulkey, about some of what he’s seen over the past 365 days. And what he sees in his crystal ball for the next 365. Welcome, Joel. 

Joel: Thank you, Mike. It’s great to chat. Yeah, it has been a well…the expectations for what years look like nowadays are a little different, I guess. How about that? 

Mike: 300 and some odd days. They just keep going. So, let’s jump right on in. So, the ongoing pandemic is the obvious elephant in the room for every business still navigating this, I hate to say it, but this new normal. And I know you talk to a lot of fellow business owners. How are they doing? 

Joel: Yeah, well, I think it varies. I mean, I think everyone is feeling this sense of expectations are uncertain. And I mean, look at what we’ve got right now, with Omicron coming up and the unknowns from that. I think people feel and then there’s definitely a wish for, “can we just put that behind us?” and “let’s get back to the things we enjoy in life and the ways we want to interact.” And obviously, there’s a lot of perspectives to that. Some folks want to hole up in their homes and lock the doors and until COVID magically goes away somehow. And then others I think, you know, we just wish that it never happened and wasn’t a part of life. 

So I, I think for Bigleaf, what we’re seeing is we have to embrace reality, which is there are a lot of new unknowns in the world today from that. And technology can be a great help. I mean, look at what we’ve been able to do in the business world of staying online and connected and driving growth and making things work in life because we have the likes of video conferencing and e-commerce and so many technology elements. That’s been great to see. 

Mike: And obviously, connectivity is a huge issue now. So, now that so many people are working from home and, you know, stealing vital bandwidth from their families’ Netflix and Twitch streams for things like Zoom, calls for their bosses, coworkers, and clients. How has residential broadband been able to handle the increased enterprise load? 

Joel: Well, I think everyone’s done a good job with them. You look back in the early days of the lockdowns in the US where some of the residential networks got a little bit overloaded, especially on the upload side. Your DSL and cable sort of connections were just not quite prepared for all the video conferencing at home. But I think that was pretty quick and got resolved. And we really see that from a bandwidth perspective. Networks are built out to handle video today and the demands of your Netflix and YouTube and all that in the evening far outweigh the throughput requirements of basically any work-from-home business use cases for people in the office. That said, I mean, that doesn’t change the situation that bandwidth is only one element of connectivity. And we just continually see. You look at our couple thousand customers where they’re saying, “Hey, it doesn’t really matter how much bandwidth I have. What I need is quality and reliability.” And that is definitely a complex scenario in the residential internet world. There are far more variables to the network than in a big enterprise downtown high rise, for example. So, it’s complicated.  

I think a lot of application providers have done a good job getting around that, where they can. You look at Microsoft and their strategy to get their front doors in place to peer really closely with ISPs. And Google’s taking a similar approach. And the application providers, they look at what the work they’re doing in Teams and Zoom and other things. A lot of smart people are dedicating a lot of effort to getting around those connectivity problems. Unfortunately, they don’t go away. We’ve seen that even with all of that focus and money and dedication [on] the network, that the internet is not providing the level of service that business people need to get work done without distractions and inefficiency and outages. So that’s where Bigleaf exists, of course, to solve those problems. And we’re seeing a lot of demand and need, especially now that these work from home, work from anywhere, and more digital transformation initiatives are happening at an even higher rate. 

Mike: Yeah, I think we’re attuned to, you know, to on and off, to outages, right? We can do it. We can deal with that as humans and as folks that have grown up with us. And it’s the quality and the reliability piece that you mentioned, right? The sort of the brownout level stuff that really that really throws us. And that’s sort of the challenge that I think a lot of people have right now.  

Joel: And you remember when it used to be normal to go into a tunnel and your cell phone would cut out? We thought that was okay and fine. Well, now, that’s just not okay anymore, right? We have a new expectation for our cell phones. The same thing is happening with internet connectivity, where today, I think a lot of folks [who are] on a Zoom call and it gets all choppy, you just accept that. And you’re okay with how it agitates you and gives you Zoom fatigue, like you just kind of accepted that’s part of life.  

Well, we need to get over that. We need to set a new bar for expectation; that connectivity should always work. And our application experience shouldn’t be crummy. So, that’s really something we’re focusing in on is how can we set that bar and inform people there is better out there than what Comcast or Verizon or Spectrum are giving you. 

Mike:  An SD-WAN has become pretty much the foundation for a lot of these new business realities. How has it helped folks? You know, especially, I would imagine, you know, we know enterprises are dealing with this and they’ve got the resources to sort of try and tackle it. But a lot of folks that are running small and medium sized businesses and this is not their normal realm, and there they have to deal with us. 

Joel: Yeah, I think that’s part of that kind of setting the new bar. We’re trying to inform those folks, hey, it’s not just what your carrier gives you that is the extent of your options. There are ways to get better than that. You can use SD-WAN to combine multiple carriers together and to route traffic intelligently over paths that will give your applications a better experience.  

So, we’re seeing that play out where once folks are aware of this functionality, we can provide and bring that onboard. Their eyes are opened to hey, we actually can rely on this technology platform for our key business needs, which is really exciting.  

So, making sure that people understand that those pieces of connectivity that go beyond speed, the reliability, the latency, jitter, packet loss, these performance metrics. There’s a ways to go beyond what the industry normally gives you. You just have to kind of be aware that these solutions, like Bigleaf, are out there. 

Mike:  And I have to think that this digital transformation to shift to the cloud has taken on even greater priority for a lot of businesses and a lot of industries. Are there any industries where you’ve seen an increased uptick in interest in SD-WAN? 

Joel: You know, it’s fairly broad. What we tend to work with are companies who their IT teams aren’t massive. So, they need smart AI, like what we bring, to manage that experience. Healthcare is an area we noticed especially notable demand this year. If you’ve got multi-site, healthcare clinics and you’re trying to manage all that with a team of three or four or five folks, that’s just a lot of load on that team. And they have a lot of need for connectivity to cloud and SaaS and site-to-site networking. So, having an intelligent network platform that takes a lot of that load off, that does a fair amount of that decision-making autonomously, has been important for them.  

There’s other places that we see that pretty applicable. You know, even legal offices and accountants and those sorts of folks, to manufacturing organizations, where you got orders coming to and from a factory all the way to gamers, you know, that are trying to make a living and playing games online. It’s really broad. But healthcare is a notable one we’ve seen this year, 

Mike: You made a mention of, I thought I heard you say something about, an intelligent platform. Tell me a little bit more about that.  

Joel: Yeah, well, I think if you compare how networking used to be. You go buy a Cisco router and you plug that into your network and you set it up and tell it what to do. You set up, hey, here’s all the parameters of how to perform. We’re going to set up some routing protocols and some access lists, and all these different policies. And then a human has to maintain that.  

So, if you need to add a new application to your network and make sure it gets treated well, that is prioritized, for example. Somebody has to go log in and update those devices. And that way of doing things worked fine when your enterprise, your business, had 510 apps that you relied on and you had control over the network experience. The apps lived in the server closet down the hall.  

Well today, when there’s 100 apps that your business relies on and people can add them at any time with a credit card, and they live all over the world in different data centers and SaaS platforms. Now, your network needs to handle that stuff itself. If you have people trying to manage all these policies to ensure that users are happy, no one’s going to be happy. So that’s where platforms like Bigleaf come into play to automatically identify those different kinds of traffic and handle them according to the needs of each traffic stream. So, if a user signs up for WebEx tomorrow, Network Administrators shouldn’t have to go in and create new policies for how to handle that traffic. The network platform should be intelligent enough to do that automatically. So, we find Bigleaf customers saying, “Hey, I like the AI approach to how this works,” and really using Bigleaf as the foundation for all of their connectivity in their applications; going forward to adapt in real time as they grow and morph their business.  

Mike: And that skills gap has got to be a boon to MSPs and other resellers and channel players, I would imagine. I know there was a Techaisle study recently that saw a gap between what small enterprises need and what MSPs believe they should offer. And to me gap always sounds a lot like another word for opportunity. 

Joel: Yeah, I think this touches on the complexity of technology today, where there’s so many ways to do things. And there’s so many needs that businesses have having a skilled consultant, whether you’re a telecom agent, or an ISP, excuse me, an MSP or a VAR. Any, anyone like that can really bring a lot of value to the customer…that those parties have already filtered through all the solutions on the market, identify the ones that work well, the ones who partner well with them, who can bring a good experience to the customer. 

So, we really value those relationships and see that, hey, we’re not deployed in every single customer location for our partners. But the partners do a great job of filtering out which of their customers need Bigleaf and which ones need something else. And which ones maybe they don’t have one of those needs because they’re not to this point in their business or something. 

Mike: So, let’s shift gears just slightly and talk a little bit about what’s been happening at Bigleaf. You guys made some pretty cool moves in 2021. 

Joel: Yeah, yeah, it’s been an interesting year; one that we’ve had some really healthy changes. We’ve also seen, again, the continuation of the pandemic in many ways where we hoped it would go away. Here we are today with the remnants and the next step. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been interesting, and good. 

Mike: Any new products and features that you’re that you’re most proud of. 

Joel:  So, we put a lot of energy this year into what we call Zero Touch Setup. And this is us taking and migrating the way that Bigleaf service is delivered to really enable our MSP partners to turn services up without having to involve us. We want to make it so they can work in the workflows that they prefer, and the timing they prefer. So, that was a big shift for us and helpful for them.  

 We’ve also invested a lot in our MSP channel, just generally. This is something we really kicked off heavily, early 2020. And with the pandemic, it’s funny, one of our team members noted today that just a couple months ago was the first time we’ve been able to get in an in-person event with those channel partners. So well, [while] we’ve had to sort of adapt and do virtual events, we’ve been able to see that channel grow aggressively this year. And we’re gonna continue to invest in that.  

We’ve expanded our network as well. So, we launched a new data center in Virginia, as kind of a hub for data centers. Things called Data Center Alley, for many folks. Amazon’s AWS East region is there. And so that’s been something that we’ve really directly responded to customer partner requests. And we’ve had good presence in the Northeast already with our New York POP, but had requests for that. So, brought that to market.  

In addition, less public-facing, but we’ve significantly expanded capacity in our network. [We] went through a big project this year to grow that capacity transparently to our customers. With props to our internal teams for doing that. It was a lot of work. 

Mike: Exciting. Now looking forward, as it’s the end of the year and as as folks are wont to do. What are some of the things you think folks should keep an eye on over the next year? Some of your predictions and things that we will see in 2022, or whatever year we’re gonna call that now? 

Joel: You know, I think that was something we realized in September. We were going to kind of do a hybrid office setup and instead had to say, hey, we’re gonna go fully remote and stay remote for the foreseeable future. I think that’s going to play out across quite a few businesses in quite a few ways. So, that work-from-anywhere notion is here to stay, I think. I think we’re seeing there’s a demand from tech workers. There’s also a need based on the pandemic to continue that.  

One of our great network engineers, he’s over in Korea right now. And it doesn’t really impact the work that’s happening. It’s pretty amazing to be able to jump on a Zoom call with them and interact. So, that sort of thing and businesses being able to leverage that, I think is going to stick around and plenty of employees are going to demand that. So, keeping an eye on that and sort of architecting businesses, technology platforms, access, security, etc. to accommodate it, I think, is going to be key.  

You know, I mentioned a little bit ago, apps are getting better and smarter at dealing with connectivity issues. But there are limits to that. So, I think we’ll continue to see that. What we’ll see folks being very innovative about, hey, within the app, what can I do? Can I make it resilient to network problems? Can I build security into the app, so I’m not reliant on network security? Those sorts of smart folks are dedicated to building the SaaS apps and coming up with great things. That’s great. That won’t eliminate the fact that there are physical wires and connectivity issues to deal with. So, you’ll continually need a solution to that, something like Bigleaf, that will intelligently manage that connectivity path.  

And then thirdly, I think AI is going to continue to be just something that transparently is working its way into life. We see that already today. When you call up somebody on the phone and you’re talking to AI before you get to talk to a person. Or you pop up, you know, support on Amazon or Google and you’re probably talking to AI first. There’s AI behind the scenes looking at your recent orders, figuring out who you should talk to, and how to respond to you. This sort of, transparent to us…or maybe opaque to us, I don’t know how anyone describes it. We can’t see it but it’s happening. And in some ways, that’s problematic I suppose. But in the world of technology and networking and connectivity, I think it’s really valuable. You look at solutions like Bigleaf, where you’re, you’re getting the benefits of AI, and getting humans to be able to focus on the things where humans really need to focus rather than sort of the menial tasks that are a little more automatable. So, I think we’ll continue to see that play out. There’s a lot of folks investing energy and money there, which I think could be good. 

Mike: Great. And no, no mention of NFTs or crypto. So, I give you high credibility already. 

Joel: You know, I consider myself someone who enjoys reading about the bleeding edge and getting into some of that stuff. I don’t understand the NFT thing. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time on it. So, I’ll have to look more into that.  

Mike: Well Joel, thank you. Thank you so much for giving us a look back and giving us a look into your crystal ball on what might be on the horizon. For more on the role SD-WAN plays in digital transformation and how Bigleaf can help you, visit bigleaf.net 

Joel: Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the time here and I think 2022 will be a great year. 

Unplanned internet downtime can bring your operations to a grinding halt, resulting in lost revenue, productivity, and other costs that are less obvious but longer-lasting. Yet, 19% of B2B SMBs and 27% of B2C organizations say they do not feel their businesses are prepared to deal with unexpected downtime.

Many of those businesses struggle with internet reliability because they simply don’t invest enough in their Internet foundation to support today’s new cloud and SaaS business technologies. IT can’t justify the cost of improving their internet stack because the ROI feels hard to articulate in a way the business can understand. In fact, 38% of SMBs say they don’t know the cost one hour of downtime is for their business.

In this post, we’ll share some of the industry-standard calculations you can use to determine your own cost of downtime. It’s our hope that, by understanding the true cost of downtime, you can make the ROI case for the internet foundation your business needs.

How to calculate your cost of downtime

Gartner provides this helpful equation to calculate the full cost of downtime.

Cost of downtime = Lost revenue + Lost productivity + Recovery costs + Intangible costs

According to a Gartner survey, the average cost of network downtime is about $5600 per minute, which adds up to well over $300K per hour. This is an average calculation. On the low end, Gartner assessed that downtime cost can be $140K per hour to a high estimate of $540K an hour.

These differences can be attributed to several factors, such as your industry, size of your organization, duration of the outage, the time of day of your outage and what’s affected at that time, how much your business relies on the internet, etc. 

The hard costs of downtime

Let’s take a closer look at the first half of this equation, with factors that are based in numbers you probably already know.

Lost revenue

Lost revenue = Revenue/hr * duration of downtime (hrs) * uptime reliance (%)           

Revenue is one of the more straightforward numbers you can identify as it directly relates to what your business generates. However, you should also consider what percentage of your revenue is affected by downtime.

For example, if your business has retail locations using POS equipment to accept payment, it’s likely that more of your revenue will be affected by downtime. In comparison, if you are running a medical clinic where you have a wider variety of activities that contribute to revenue generation, downtime may not affect your revenue as much.

Gartner often looks at data that relates to larger enterprises. So, the numbers above may not seem like they apply to your small to medium sized business. Let’s look at an example that might resonate more.

Example: 
Let’s think about a call center that makes $4M a year in revenue. As a call center, their employees’ reliance on uptime is 100%. This would calculate their lost revenue at $2,083 for the incident.
Lost revenue per hour = Revenue/hour * duration of downtime (hrs) * uptime reliance(%)

Total lost revenue = $2,083 * 1 * 100% = $2,083 

Lost productivity

Lost productivity = Avg. employee salary/hr * number of employees affected * duration of downtime (hrs) * uptime reliance (%)

Lost productivity is related to the cost of your employees’ salaries that must still be paid even when they can’t use the cloud applications that are affected by the downtime. This number can also be affected by uptime reliance. If your employees’ jobs are 100% reliant on your internet being up and running because all the tools they use are cloud or internet-based, then 100% of their salaries will be affected by downtime. Also consider the number of employees that are affected.

Example: 
For this example, we'll keep things simple and just account for the employees who are working the phones. We won't figure in the administrative and other staff, even though their work would likely also be disrupted by downtime. In this call center, we have 75 employees whose salaries average $11/hour.
Lost productivity = Avg. employee salary/hour * number of employees affected * duration of downtime (hrs) * uptime reliance (%)  
Lost productivity = $11 * 75 * 1 * 100% = $825

Adding it up so far

So far in this example, this business is already looking at a cost of $2,908 for this incident, which happened with an hour of downtime ($2,083 + $825 = $2,908).          

Let’s tease this out to see what the annual cost would look like.

As part of Bigleaf’s SD-WAN technology, we monitor tens of thousands of internet circuits for performance and reliability. Based on that customer data, we’ve calculated that their connections are providing them with an average of 93.1% of usable uptime, and the remaining 6.9%  translates to an average of 604 hours per year of effective downtime.

This probably sounds high to you because the numbers most ISPs talk about refers to “hard” downtime. This is when the circuit is completely unavailable. For example, when you can’t send a ping, the internet connection is hard down. Our calculations show that connections experience an average of 31 hours of this absolute downtime a year.

The 604 hours a year number above is accounting for both this hard downtime as well as “unusable uptime.” That’s when your internet connection is officially still up but performing in a way that creates a very unproductive experience. This significantly affects all the modern internet-based tools you’re using, such as Zoom or MS Teams. From your users’ perspective, the internet is working but not well enough for them to do their jobs. So, this needs to be included in your downtime calculations.

Example: 
In our call center example, we’ve calculated the cost of an hour’s worth of downtime to be $2,908. That adds up to be approximately $1,756,432 of downtime cost for the year.
Cost of downtime in a year = Hours of downtime in a year * cost of an hour of downtime 

Cost of downtime = 604 * $2,908 = $1,756,432

The “soft costs” of downtime

By just calculating the hard costs, our SMB example is already facing more than $1.75M in annual downtime costs. This doesn’t even consider the costs that are less easy to estimate but do factor into your total business cost. While those costs are called “soft” here, by no means is their impact subtle.

Recovery costs

Recovery costs = Repair services + Consulting services + Replacement parts + New hardware + Lost data recovery + Other costs related to repair and recovery

These are costs related to the task of fixing the issue, which can include repair and service costs, replacement costs, and lost data recovery costs. These totals need to be added to your running total. Review your previous years’ expenses in these categories to estimate what you might expect for recovery costs.  

Intangible costs

Intangible costs can include a variety of things that have a greater and longer-lasting impact than the hard costs mentioned above. For example, as your IT team focuses on resolving the outage, they lose focus on their strategic initiatives.

Your brand’s reputation and customer satisfaction can also take huge hits, which can ultimately lead to the loss of existing and new customers. In fact, more than 37% of SMBs admitted to having lost customers due to downtime issues.

For some businesses, there can also be fines or penalties associated with any breach of agreement, such as not meeting the terms of an SLA. Others may face fees or payments related to litigation or settlements.

Even without dollar amounts, think about how sensitive your customers and teams are to downtime and the other costs they create for your business.

Use these questions to start evaluating your intangible downtime costs:

Amount of impact damaging your brand and increasing costs to your business

How often are your customers experiencing downtime that significantly impacts how they do business with you?

How easy is it for your customers to go to a competitor for a similar product or service?

How much are your teams having to redirect their focus from business initiatives to fix downtime problems or issues resulting from them?

How frustrated is your staff with their inability to do their work because of downtime?

How much effort do you need to put in to acquiring new customers to make up for the ones you’ve lost due to downtime?

Next steps

Use these calculations and assessments to better understand what downtime is really costing your business. Then you can start to compare your cost of downtime to the costs it would take to mitigate that downtime, such as:

• Installing additional internet connection circuits and simple failover
• Implementing reactive performance monitoring, Netflow, and/or troubleshooting tools
• Investing in proactive tools like Bigleaf, which can provide self-driving systems that use AI to automatically detect and resolve issues

Once you know what downtime is costing your business, it’s time to right-size your digital infrastructure investment. Use the SMB Internet Maturity Model to assess what kind of internet performance your business needs to achieve its operational and strategic goals.

Contact us

Contact us if you need guidance on assessing your cost of downtime or how to right-size the reliability of your connectivity. We can also walk through how hundreds of other SMBs are using Bigleaf to eliminate their downtime costs and getting an SLA-backed 99.99% uptime guarantee.

In addition to being excellent tools for collaboration, voice and video are also effective network diagnostic tools. With their sensitivity to circuit conditions, interactive voice and video more easily reveal problems with internet performance that other applications can limp through. A certain amount of packet loss and jitter won’t do much to your email or even a file download, but a video call will freeze, distort, and drop. 

These issues reveal that your network likely needs an update. It needs to be reimagined for what we need it to do today…and what we will need of it tomorrow.

Enabling cloud-first business

To run the business the way that they imagined, the leadership of the mortgage service provider TruHome had a vision of improving their telephony system and becoming a cloud-first organization. To support all of that, they needed a more resilient network that wasn’t subject to outages or poor performance. However, moving beyond traditional network transport was daunting, because their call center locations were the heartbeat of their business. 

Although cloud-based voice over IP (VoIP) solutions offered a lot of tempting advantages, any move that would increase the risk of downtime or compromise call quality was a non-starter. Their leadership, IT team, and consultants knew the stakes were high as they forged ahead planning a resilient, multiple-location network. They imagined a network that didn’t just improve their call quality but also positioned them to take advantage of other cloud-based applications for the future.

Data networks that use legacy architecture designed with an on-premise server mindset can hamper the evolution of business technology. Branch offices traditionally used carrier-based circuits on costly, rigid MPLS networks that centralize connectivity and bind together the network reliability of every location. This made sense when business resources were hosted on-premise at a single location. 

Now and into the future, traffic is increasingly going to cloud-based resources, not to a central office. TruHome’s vision of a resilient, distributed network that relied on the internet and cloud-based solutions was a good plan. Unfortunately, the challenges they faced were different than what they were familiar with or prepared for.  

The internet is a jungle filled with potential outages, poor BGP configurations, and flaky routers. The more you learn about how the internet functions, the riskier it sounds to rely on it as your business lifeline every second of every day.

And yet, this is what we do. The good news is that reliable, cost-effective internet performance is possible. With an intelligent software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), businesses can run mission-critical applications in the cloud without worry. As needs and applications change, the business can continue to adapt, all without major overhauls or downtime.

The SD-WAN needed today

The new technologies that enable business operations are less often found at centrally located on-premises servers. Other services are not all at the same location, either: phone, collaboration, transactions, and data originate with different providers that each need to be reliably accessible. 

Networks should be more intelligent, dynamically and autonomously supporting the continuous evolution of business technology. IT teams can’t be focused on the day-to-day changes, particularly for their distributed workforce. SMBs need their IT staff and vendors to be working on long-term initiatives, not constant tweaks to QoS or troubleshooting flaky phone calls.

Organizations, especially SMBs, benefit greatly when they can count on their network to manage their traffic intelligently. The type of SD-WAN needed today understands the current challenges of ISPs and IT teams. It adds intelligence to an organization’s network by autonomously:

• assessing and adjusting to the conditions of a circuit in real-time
• recognizing business-type application traffic and prioritizing it end-to-end across a network, even when new technologies are introduced
• utilizing multiple connections for their best use, from load-balancing traffic across all circuits to delivering redundancy and seamless failover where connections stay up; continuing phone calls and internet access like nothing happened. 

Today’s SD-WAN needs to achieve reliability and resilience without constant personal attention. Business-class traffic should travel reliably across commodity broadband without the need for technical staff to constantly monitor and make complex, manual configurations or compromise on firewall security. 

The Right SD-WAN

The key to the TruHome plan was an SD-WAN that could intelligently optimize how traffic behaved on a network and provide the performance that VoIP and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) required. For it to have long term value, the implementation and ongoing management needed to be simple.

Before they found Bigleaf, the TruHome implementation was in trouble. The cost and complexity of a cloud-first network with the appropriate security controls was daunting. Knowing what problems the internet would throw at them, the planners were not convinced the architecture would be reliable. There was too much on the line to accept that.

“It’s one thing to run your data applications on ISP circuits and your telephony on a standard carrier separately. If one is down, some operations can still continue. When you are running data and telephony needs over the same solution, that means you must up the ante on your edge network and data circuits. It means you need a topology that allows you to leverage multiple diverse carriers and solves every outage scenario you can throw at it, not just the ones you think to write policies for.”

John Pentlin, Vice President of IT, TruHome

Resilient and Autonomous Networks to Ignite Distance Collaboration

TruHome has been able to realize its vision of a resilient and autonomous network by implementing Bigleaf. 

The Bigleaf Cloud Access Network peers to 150 cloud host providers, bringing cloud resources “closer.” Operations are less vulnerable to the many outages, breakages and slowdowns that occur across the internet.

The Bigleaf equipment and the Bigleaf Cloud Access Network function autonomously, providing intelligent responses to issues on the internet and to new applications brought online. No IT person needs to be available. No QoS rules need to be configured.

Operating as the firewall’s connection to the internet, the Bigleaf SD-WAN solution does not require any modifications to the firewall itself.

With reliable business-class voice and UCaaS over their internet connections, TruHome relies on intelligent, autonomous networks built with Bigleaf. With redundancy that maximizes the function of all connections and dynamically optimizes for mission critical services, they can move into their cloud-based future. 

Want to see intelligent networking in action? Check out our webinar with Lionakis IT Director Matthew Onken, “Creating a Resilient Network.”

On August 30th, CenturyLink/Level 3 experienced a widespread internet outage lasting nearly 5 hours. This not only impacted their network and their direct customers, but it also affected many other ISPs and services that connected to their network, directly or indirectly.

Each year, there are numerous notable internet disruptions like that one, which can bring businesses to a grinding halt. In just the past few months, Comcast has experienced widespread outage, and AT&T internet service was interrupted or slowed throughout Florida.

Events like these affect every organization that relies on cloud-based applications and video-based communications to maintain day-to-day operations and serve customers. Outages reveal the increased power and indispensability of these tools for business and highlight the importance of internet performance — frequently shining a spotlight on poor WAN performance. This can cost a business even more than the estimated $5,600 per minute that Gartner calculated back in 2014.

While outages are show stoppers, they can still be considered relatively rare. However, jittery VoIP, flaky video calls, or lagging ERP and point-of-sale tools are everyday occurrences, with a significant impact on productivity and the bottom line. Depending on the size and nature your operation, poor network performance can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per minute.

It is an ongoing challenge for businesses to keep mission-critical operations running smoothly over internet connections, especially as more tools are regularly spun up as needed at the department, team, or even user level without IT involvement. And as adoption of cloud-based applications and SaaS solutions increases, traditional networks become even more complex and difficult to manage. Network engineers and IT teams are increasingly strained by dynamic technology stacks (cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid) and a workforce that is more geographically dispersed.

Smarter network operations

Bigleaf offers a cloud-first SD-WAN solution that improves network efficiency, optimizes IT resources, and helps you create a more resilient and dependable network for your mission-critical applications.

We make it easy to build a transparent, worry-free network that frees IT teams from cumbersome network management tasks and support calls. With our intelligent software, owned and operated Cloud Access Network, 99.99% SLA-backed uptime, tier one support, and firewall-friendly design, Bigleaf helps IT teams to deliver solid internet and cloud app performance more easily in an uncertain environment.

Bigleaf recognizes that tech stacks constantly evolve. Apps are deployed and retired almost daily because individual users have different requirements. If a webinar presenter is dissatisfied with one video conferencing tool, you can be sure they’ll deploy a different one next time. These types of changes don’t need to be a four-alarm fire that spurs the IT department to make manual SD-WAN configuration changes for QoS and firewall compatibility. Bigleaf’s intelligent solution makes it easy for businesses to scale and adjust to changes, in many cases automatically, while maintaining uptime and performance.

These applications and technologies represent investments that business need to see pay off every day. That requires reliable performance at headquarters, branch offices, and home offices no matter what tools are being used. Bigleaf meets those needs with redundant, dependable SD-WAN that’s smarter than your average network architecture.

By stabilizing the network for the technology that powers your business, you can rest easy knowing VoIP won’t fail during an all-hands conference call, video won’t get jittery or freeze during the next big sales presentation, and sales and inventory transactions will go through every time.

To learn more about Bigleaf’s intelligent networking solution from a real-world perspective, watch this webinar — Creating a resilient network: Q&A with Lionakis IT Director Matthew Onken.

So what happened? Bigleaf’s founder and CEO took a few minutes to share some insights from our perspective running a network that peers with CenturyLink and many others.

Video transcript

Hi, I’m Joel Mulkey, founder and CEO of Bigleaf Networks. You may be wondering what happened with the CenturyLink / Level 3 outage that happened yesterday, on Sunday. We definitely saw that going on. We own and operate our own backbone network and had a lot of visibility and were able to respond to that. I’ll talk you through a little bit of that now.

So we had a couple responses to that. One that was automated. So our SD-WAN software that is managing traffic constantly – 10 times a second – detected that and responded by rerouting customer traffic wherever possible, keeping folks up and running, which was great. We also had a manual response. We have a skilled network engineering and operations team who was alerted and went and dug in and found some optimizations they could make in how traffic was flowing.

And through that, we saw some different customer experiences. So the nature of this issue that CenturyLink / Level 3 had – it was actually the Level 3 network which is now owned by CenturyLink but not fully incorporated – they had this BGP issue. BGP is the routing protocol that runs the internet, and you can think of it as a sort of black hole sort of an issue where, like an onramp on a freeway. If Waze is sending all the traffic to that onramp but there’s actually an accident, this was a similar scenario where CenturyLink was saying “Hey, get to all these networks through me,” yet their network wasn’t functioning right.

And so, it was a very difficult time for network operators – kind of unprecedented with CenturyLink even telling other big carriers, “Hey, shut off your connections to us,” which was a pretty substantial move, disconnecting one of the world’s biggest networks from the internet. But they had about a 4-hour outage, from 4 am Pacific Time to about 8 am Pacific Time.

And we were able to respond to that. So our customers, they saw and experienced – if they had multiple WAN circuits, maybe they had AT&T and something else, generally they stayed up and running. Although because of that black hole-ing, no exclusively. Some customers had outages because their traffic was flowing through CenturyLink and CenturyLink was just dropping it. And then on the content side, if you were trying to reach content that was hosted by CenturyLink, even as one of the paths to that content, you may have been able to not reach it. So it was quite the dramatic moment.

Thankfully, most of our customers stayed up and running, and were happy. If you only had one WAN circuit with CenturyLink, obviously you were down. In that case, I certainly do recommend – take a look at diverse WAN connections, take look at Bigleaf as an intelligent SD-WAN platform that can automatically mitigate these kinds of issues. And let us know if you have any questions. We’re happy to share more about this, what we saw, and how our platform can help. Thanks.

By enabling this on your account, you’re letting us know that you would like to provide feedback and be part of the feature development process at Bigleaf. Your feedback and input will help us decide how and what we design for our features.

How you can participate

There are a few stages when we may reach out or contact you:

General product call – A product call gives you a chance to speak to a person on the Product team and walk them through the challenges you encounter daily, and discuss features or new ideas you would like to see us work on.

Early feature design call – This may include us showing off a prototype design or mockup(s). Then you’ll have the floor to tell us what you think about what you’ve seen.

Beta testing – During beta testing, you would be given access to use and test out new features that are in a more complete state.

We look forward to interacting with you and getting your feedback and ideas!

Getting Started with Bigleaf

Bigleaf customers can get full documentation of our features by contacting Bigleaf support at  support@bigleaf.net or by reading the release notes. To get more details on these new bandwidth packages, please reach out to your channel sales manager, or contact us at 1-888-244-3133. If you’re not a Bigleaf customer yet and would like to learn more about how we can help ensure performant uptime across your organization, request a demo today.

So, while we know that video and VoIP problems are often caused by poor internet connections, there are other culprits too. In this article, we will give some examples of quality problems so you can determine what the real culprit might be and how to resolve it.

When your equipment is to blame 

Sometimes, the main culprit in bad calls isn’t the internet connection at all: it’s the computer and its attached peripherals. When we are lucky, the problem is simply a configuration issue or a minor setting.  

Voice is too quiet or volume too low  

If the person on the other end of the conversation is reporting that they can’t hear the other side, frequently this is because the audio settings on the computer aren’t set correctly. The audio input needs to be turned up. 

Popping, crackling, or distorted voice 

If the opposite happens, and the audio is turned up too high, voices will come across to the listener with buzzing, popping, or cracking noise. Too much signal is being pushed through the computer and is distorting the audio. 

Fuzzy voices or lots of background noise 

Many computers and laptops come with low-quality microphones that just can’t do a good job picking up voices or differentiating between the speaker’s voice and background noise. In some cases, this isn’t the microphone’s fault but the nature of the environment – noisy surroundings are going to crowd into the call! 

Luckily, there are a lot of external computer microphones and headsets on the market that are still a huge step up from the built-in mics in most laptops. You can find very affordable USB and Bluetooth microphones easily that are a sufficient upgrade. Look for noise cancelling capabilities. Make sure the application gets configured to use the new microphone or headset. 

Blurry video or poor video color quality 

Just like many laptops and computers come with low-quality microphones, so it is with webcams. Poor quality webcams send low-resolution video, fuzzy video, or just bland and washed-out video. If there is a nicer webcam plugged into the computer, make sure it’s selected as the default video input device in the video conferencing software. 

Choppy voice, blocky video 

Video conferencing can be processor-intensive work, and if a computer is already overloaded, it might not be able to keep up with the demands for computing power. This manifests in a number of ways. Software can freeze up, voice can become choppy or non-responsive, and video can become blocky or just stop all together.  

Some of these symptoms look very similar to problems caused by internet issues. The operating system’s task manager or process manager can be used to determine if the computer is being over-burdened by too many running applications. Look for spikes in CPU and memory when the video call is in process. 

Diagnosing network problems 

Once you’ve ruled out issues with the computer and peripherals, it’s time to turn your suspicions to the internet connection. Video conferencing and VoIP can have some of the most stringent performance requirements of all Internet traffic. Different VoIP implementations respond in varying ways to the network issue, so performance may be poor and unstable. Here are some examples of what internet connection problems might look like. 

You can’t always spot your own problems 

Barring hardware problems, everybody sees their own video just fine. Since local video doesn’t have to travel over the internet and pass through extra processing, compression, and routing, each participant in a video conference sees their own video feed in the highest possible definition with as few problems as possible. 

While this allows everybody to make sure they don’t have spinach in their teeth or a stack of dirty dishes in the background, it also prevents a participant from noticing issues with their own internet connection. They need somebody on the other end to tell them if something is going wrong. 

The big freeze 

When video or audio freezes and the computer isn’t to blame, there has been a network interruption or outage. Maybe this is just because the home router or WiFi access point needs to be rebooted, but even more often, there is a connection interruption somewhere between the computer and the video conferencing service. 

Blocky video and reduced video resolution 

If the video gets blocky, or especially if it changes to a lower resolution and gets grainy, this means that somewhere on the internet, there are connection and bandwidth issues. These are frequently temporary or intermittent problems, as internet nodes and video conferencing software will already be working to repair them. This is one problem that can frequently seems to resolve itself in a few moments. 

Robot voice 

The same internet conditions that can cause reduced video resolution can also contribute to “robot voice”. You know it when you hear it. The person on the other end of the call will sound like they’re out of a bad 1980s music video, with long drawn-out noises and over-processed, electronic tones. 

Most VoIP and conferencing software will do its best to make up for reduced bandwidth and connection problems to keep the video and audio in sync, and those software corrections lead to the robot voice effect. 

Delay and stutter 

As streams of data travel across the Internet, sometimes data can arrive at its destination at unpredictable times and even in an unpredictable order, called packet jitter. It can take the computer a while to put packets back in order. Jitter shows up in voice and video as really bad delay or stutter. 

Internet protocols are designed to handle this sort of issue, so most of the time you won’t even notice occasional jitter. However, sometimes the delay gets so bad that conference participants start talking over each other. This is definitely indicative of an internet connection problem. 

Directional problems 

Since each participant in a video conference has a different internet connection, each can experience quality problems in completely different ways. This means that just because you are receiving blocky, laggy video, that doesn’t mean the person on the other end is experiencing any problems at all. Her download may be delivering you in smooth crisp HD but her upload is sending her image and audio through a poorly performing or too-small of a connection, creating a really disruptive experience for you. It’s important to let others know when you’re experiencing audio and video issues so that everybody can have the opportunity to improve their connection. 

What can you do about call quality problems in the home office? 

Depending on the issue you’re facing, the solution could be as simple as purchasing a new pair of headphones or having your at-home employee reboot their ISP modem. However, if the problems stem from the performance of their residential internet connection and home network you don’t control, Bigleaf Home Office can provide your employees with reliable internet access to ensure worry-free call quality from their home offices.

Learn more about improving call quality

Check out this recorded webinar “Fix bad video and VoIP calls for good” to learn how to solve common issues and enable a worry-free connection.

With the sudden, urgent shift to work from home that began in March and the current likelihood that many will continue to work remotely, IT and help desk staff are expanding into new territory. Instead of just on-premise-support, now your IT team is also supporting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of home offices, each with its own quirks, unique configurations, and unknown hardware.

One of the challenges with supporting remote workers is that they still need to hold meetings, and with today’s amazing advances in internet telephony and video conferencing, using video chat is becoming the new norm. In addition to video conferencing, there are many other business applications vying for support and bandwidth, from file sharing to database access to remote desktops to VPNs. Residential internet connections were not built to simultaneously handle this type of traffic alongside gaming and streaming services all day, especially when aggregated across entire neighborhoods and even rural areas filled with at-home workers.

Supporting home office network connections

Home offices face a number of internet connection challenges. Due to the asymmetry of residential bandwidth, home office network connections tend to have low upstream throughput. Business applications are definitely competing with residential bulk data for their share of that coveted home internet connection.

The wide variety of network devices being used by at-home workers will make it challenging for the IT support staff to be familiar with every configuration and every option available. In this situation, you are reduced to guiding non-technical workers through ping tests over the phone and urging your coworkers to go thumbing through manuals in hopes of finding helpful support information. This is not an ideal situation and is bound to be frustrating for all parties involved.

A configuration option that may be available for remote workers in their home network is Quality of Service, or QoS. This will configure traffic shaping at the network device and can hopefully be used to give priority to specific types of traffic. However, it is important to remember that in residential routers and access points, the QoS settings will typically be limited. It may just be an on/off toggle switch.

Residential hardware is not typically good at identifying a variety of traffic types, which means that while it’s possible to turn QoS support on, it might not actually be addressing the problem. However, some do implement device-level prioritization by MAC or IP address. When available, this could be useful for favoring the work computer over the kid’s tablet.

If the router does have more detailed QoS configuration options, a certain level of technical know-how will likely be needed to make those policy changes. Whether the options are basic or more complex, it’s likely that each of your home workers is using a different model of router and different hardware to connect to the internet. This means IT would have to support an array of devices with different capabilities.

Advanced solutions for the home office

Since the QoS solutions in residential hardware are typically limited, the first solution to come to mind might be to use existing enterprise hardware and repurpose it for the home office. In order for a QoS solution to be able to prioritize business traffic over residential traffic, it needs to be able to do these three things:

1. Identify the source and type of network traffic.
2. Synchronize information across devices.
3. Be aware of the total amount of bandwidth available – in both directions.

Most traditional enterprise QoS solutions can handle the first two requirements just fine, but many don’t have the ability to be aware of throughput or network capacity. They are designed for the consistent business connection, not the shared, fluctuating residential connection. This limits the effectiveness of their traffic shaping capabilities for a residential service.

Fortunately, there are newer QoS technologies such as Bigleaf Network’s Dynamic QoS, which automatically identifies and and applies automated QoS policies to ensure business app traffic is prioritized over other household traffic. Bigleaf also monitors constantly shifting broadband capacity in real time to adjust traffic before key applications drop or lag.

Bigleaf is committed to helping organizations provide their employees with reliable communications, internet access, and application performance in their home offices. Bigleaf Home Office can keep the chaos and unpredictability of residential Internet connections from impacting business communications and applications.

With an easy plug-in, no manual-configuration installation users can do themselves, Bigleaf Home Office can be easily deployed across your team’s home offices. A Bigleaf edge router is sent directly to each home office, and the typical install simply requires it to be plugged in to the existing ISP modem and to a WiFi router without the need for specialized IT resources. The set up works seamlessly with existing ISP and broadband connections, supporting both single and multiple circuits.

Alongside QoS, Bigleaf Home Office offers software-defined networking (SD-WAN) with support for redundant network connections and outage detection outside the home network. Bigleaf utilizes its nationwide Cloud Access Network and gateway clusters to ensure a high-performance connection to the Cloud. You can also remotely view and manage the health of the home office network with the Bigleaf online dashboard, which will make troubleshooting infinitely faster.

Learn more about Bigleaf Home Office.

How to support connectivity for business applications when everyone works from home

The challenges of managing IT for our newly remote workforce cannot be overstated. As the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered our offices, the number of Americans working from home went from 15 million to an estimated 92 million. That means you have gone from supporting one, or maybe a handful of sites, to supporting all the business apps your users need on different devices connected in different ways to different ISPs.

As in-person meetings move to video conferencing apps and files are flying around inboxes and collaboration tools, your users are leveraging more digital apps than ever. They need fluid video and at-the-ready resources, while hooked up to a home internet service that you have no control over. As funny as it is to see the CEO’s video get stuck in an awkward pose during an all-hands call, these connectivity issues are disrupting the key apps that run your business. With the coronavirus pandemic keeping us all at home for the foreseeable future, it’s your role to lead your company to stable, reliable, working internet.

We’re wrangling terabytes on a system built for “Tiger King”

When trying to serve users at home, it’s useful to consider some fundamental differences in home and office internet contracts, infrastructure, and packages.

• Data has a harder path to travel to residences. ISP points of presence tend to be closer to offices than homes. This means that there’s more infrastructure between your home and the closest internet ‘hub,’ increasing the chance of something breaking or slowing down your data.
• Residential ISP contracts don’t have the service level agreements (SLA) that are usually a part of your business service. Your sales development rep Clara is now mission-critical from her home office, but does not have the power to enforce an SLA for service to her two-bedroom unit in the burbs.
• You generally don’t use all of your bandwidth at home and neither do your neighbors. ISPs build their business model on oversubscription: selling more bandwidth potential than they can actually provide because they know it is unlikely for all of it to be used – sometimes at 40 to 1. Now we are all working from home, and their calculations are way off. They become a bottleneck.

Their home network is a black box

At the office, you know your equipment. You probably installed and configured much of it yourself. Maybe you named some of your favorites. It’s OK, we see you. The point is, you are in control of your stack and you know how it works. Your users’ home LAN and the ISPs WAN may as well be a black box and you have no way to figure out what’s going on with it.

Your customers (a.k.a. team members working from home) have their own customers – the other family members who are using the network for learning and entertainment. The LAN can have all manner of devices and configs. How do you troubleshoot a connection you can’t see?

Give your traffic the right of way

The solution to internet connectivity problems is to prioritize the important business traffic above apps that are not business-critical. Sometimes, all it takes is a manual approach: Having your user identify the traffic hogs on their connection and curb their use – human or machine. This might be unpopular in the household, so for most users, you’ll need a more sophisticated solution. Configuring the user LAN’s Quality of Service (QoS) settings on their residential routers can help (if the router has a QoS capability), but only for problems that originate in the home. It won’t resolve issues between their ISP modem and the servers that host key business applications.

Bigleaf Home Office is a software-defined wide-area network, or SD-WAN, based on technology we have effectively delivered to support office environments. To optimize existing ISP service in the home office, Bigleaf Home Office automatically detects the needs of business applications and intelligently adapts traffic in real time. It supports single circuit connections that are typically found in homes and can also use two internet connections to load balance traffic and perform automatic failover.

Speed test results don’t tell you much

When users encounter a slowdown, their first port of call is frequently a web speed test like speedtest.net. When the results come back saying everything is peachy, they think their problem must have been a blip. We have found that some ISPs actively prioritize speed test traffic to reduce the number of angry customer calls. These popular tools can’t be relied upon to give you what you need to know to support them effectively.

With our technology, you get real-time and historical data and insights about what’s happening across your home office connections. So, when the call comes from a remote worker with internet or application issues, you’ll know what to do. Read about Bigleaf Home Office or request a demo if you want to learn more.

We had always wanted to develop a home office solution, but there were some challenges holding us back that would need to be solved before we could release it. When the sweeping stay-at-home mandates hit and led more than 92 million people in the U.S. to work-from-home, we knew we had to expedite our efforts to support them. We realized that these new remote workers would not only have to share their internet connection with their families and housemates, they would have to count on their residential ISP lines, which can often be unreliable. Amidst all the other distractions business workers might face at home, we wanted to help them stay productive with their work, without having to deal with problematic internet connections and compete for bandwidth with non-business applications.

Bigleaf Home Office prioritizes the traffic most critical to your online calls (VoIP/Video) and business applications over less critical things like file transfers or video streaming. The Home Office product, like our business offering, does this by segmenting the traffic into different classes and prioritizing them accordingly. This means that while someone is watching Netflix or transferring files, your Zoom call (or similar) remains uninterrupted and is given the performance it requires.

While a common belief is that SD-WAN solutions require a second circuit to work. Bigleaf Home Office also works effectively with a single circuit. Not only does it manage QoS prioritization in the home office LAN, its connection to our Cloud Access Network allows it to monitor the circuit outside the home network and adapt in real-time to varying broadband capacity–to make sure key applications don’t drop or lag. 

Based on Bigleaf technology, Bigleaf Home Office uses intelligent algorithms, instead of policies, to automatically identify and prioritize business app traffic. This, alongside a streamlined installation process allows everyone from highly technical to not-technical people to successfully bring the service online in their homes.

We initially rolled out Bigleaf Home Office in March of this year and focused our efforts to help those who most critically needed the service via our Essential Services program. We have since helped companies across the US bring the Home Office service online and ensured their business applications performed as reliably as needed. Now, with so many more of us working from home, the need and focus of having home offices operate with the same efficiency and performance as business offices is more necessary than ever. 

In addition to making Bigleaf Home Office more broadly available, we’re also announcing a new, larger service package of 1000Mbsp down/ 100Mbps up. Now, whether you are running a 80/10 Mbps DSL line from a rural ISP or a more robust fiber line, there is a service package to fit the needs of remote workers to make sure they do not get interrupted or lose productivity. 

This is all in thanks to those of you who have contacted us and provided us with your feedback to help shape what we made available. It is a part of our DNA to constantly engage and ascertain how well our product is fitting your needs and solving your problems. We value these interactions with the highest regards and it is through this feedback that we are able to become aware of new needs or missing components of our product line.

To get more details on Bigleaf Home Office or the new bandwidth package, please reach out to your Channel Sales Manager, or contact us at 1-888-244-3133. If you’re not a Bigleaf Customer yet and would like to learn more about how we can help ensure performant uptime across your home offices, request a demo today.