If you are not sure what network uptime is, you may be overlooking critically important information about your network.
More specifically, without having information about your network’s uptime, you could be unaware of your network’s performance.
Additionally, if you are unsure of what network uptime is, you may not know how SD-WAN can help your network achieve better uptime.
SD-WAN helps your network in a variety of ways but with network uptime being a very important feature, knowing how SD-WAN contributes to this is very beneficial information to have.
Coeo knows how important a good network connection is to an organization.
We want to make sure you have all the information you need on network uptime and how SD-WAN addresses it so you can improve your network connection.
By the end of this article, you will know what network uptime is what SD-WAN is, and how SD-WAN addresses network uptime.
What is network uptime?
Network uptime is the time when a network is up and running properly. Network uptime is usually measured as a percentage of time a machine, usually, a computer is up and running properly.
Of course, the longer a network is up and running, the higher the percentage of network uptime. Typically, a network should aim to have a network uptime percentage as close to 99% as possible.
The concept of five nines is a process that IT departments aim for when it comes to network uptime which refers to 99.999% uptime.
This analytic translates to around 5.26 minutes of unplanned downtime a year; a sweet spot for network uptime.
What is network downtime?
Network downtime is the opposite of network uptime. It refers to the inability to access some or all of a network because of the failure of a system, application, or entire network of a company.
Network downtime can also be the result of software or hardware failure and can involve internal failure or a poor connection to the external network.
There are two types of network downtime that a company can experience; planned and unplanned downtime.
Planned downtime is when network downtime is scheduled in advance with a prior warning that gives users a chance to prepare. It usually has a specific timeline so the network is back up promptly.
On the other hand, unplanned downtime is when network downtime is not scheduled in advance and happens with no warning.
There is typically no recovery timeline when it comes to getting the network back online.
What is SD-WAN?
If your network is struggling to stay above or around the network uptime five-nine principle, this could be very costly for your organization.
Most companies lose thousands of dollars for every minute that their network is down.
Your network needs to be reliable not only for your own organization to be productive but for your customers to also be productive.
An SD-WAN solution addresss this issue and increases network uptime for your organization.
SD-WAN or Software Defined Wide-Area-Network, is an overlay network built on top of underlying network connections and can be connected using fiber, LTE, or broadband.
SD-WAN solves the problem that many organizations face when it comes to network reliability by making sure your network is strong and secure.
To learn more about SD-WAN, you can review the SD-WAN Buyer's Guide:
How SD-WAN improves network uptime
With an SD-WAN layover network, you will have better network connectivity.
This connectivity will improve your network uptime, bringing them closer to the five-nine rule and making you and your employees more efficient and productive.
An SD-WAN uses multiple connections at a time to send out data. This allows your SD-WAN to continually look for the most reliable connection to send data through.
With SD-WAN you have the ability to prioritize data that is more important than other data which allows you to send out the most important data the fastest.
If your SD-WAN network is connected to multiple connections, it will review each connection to see which one is the fastest and will send out the data with the highest priority through the fastest connection.
Additionally, since SD-WAN uses multiple connections, if one connection is down, your whole network will not go down because your SD-WAN solution will not use that connection until the connection is back up.
This helps your network to maintain more network uptime.
How to test your network connection
Everyone wants their network to have the highest network uptime. With the proper solution, you can check your network performance by running a few tests on it.
The greatest benefit of network monitoring is the non-stop service. This allows your organization to constantly monitor the information on your network to ensure that you know that it’s operating efficiently.
Most Application Performance Monitoring (APM) software can give you the root cause of the problem regarding your network connection.
APM software like New Relic, Google Cloud, and AppOptics will help monitor and test your network connection so you can improve your network uptime.
Click the link below to use this free tool to learn how you stack up against your peers and learn how to stop poor network performance, reduce outages, and learn best practices for maintaining a resilient network. 
Next steps to a more reliable network connection
Now you know what network uptime is what SD-WAN is, and how SD-WAN can address network uptime.
This information will give you a better understanding of your network and allow you to make changes to make your network more reliable.
Without knowing what network uptime is, you could overlook or misinterpret the information regarding your network uptime analytics.
Your network uptime could be severely low and you may have no idea which could hurt your business and cost you significant amounts of money.
Coeo has helped thousands of customers with their network reliability and improved many customers’ network uptime.
We want you to know all of the information regarding network uptime and how SD-WAN can improve it so you can make your organization’s network more reliable.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about how SD-WAN can address network uptime or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now you know what network uptime is and how SD-WAN addresses it. Read this article to learn what SD-WAN failover is and how it can improve network uptime and avoid latency issues:
