A backup ISP for Dakota State University
Researching for my final projfect I came across several IT solutions for providing schools with the internet. A popular choice for smaller private schools would be a business line.
http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/Internet_Connection_Options
Also the popularity of redundant ISP lines is on the rise both in the education and business sectors. A web site like Amazon going offline would cost the company over $100,000′s every hour it is offline. The effect on a school like DSU would not be so great, but I think we can all remember when our school internet has crawled to a halt and how dramatic that effect had on us. Perhaps DSU should look into getting alternet ISP lines. We continually as especially as most of us are savvy and heavy internet users we use our link for everything from music to video entertainment. Our appetite for bandwidth has grown extremely large, so maybe a backup line would be unrealistic. It is food for thought for the future, when you open your own business, instead of one big tube, think about getting several smaller ones in case some ISP connections are unreliable. There is something to be said for redundancy in telecommunications.
Curious: do we see a similar push for redundancy in <a provision of other utilities? We some institutions like hospitals investing in back-up electrical systems (usually in-house generators), but do we see anyone hooking up to two different electric utilities, or water providers, or natural gas lines? Is there a difference here?