Minimize Network Downtime with Proactive Managed Router Services

According to the Ponemon Institute’s annual report, the average cost of unplanned outages is $8,850 per minute. But, what are you supposed to do when these failures arise? A lot of businesses don’t understand how to handle something like this, or even if it is possible to prevent it in the first place. Luckily, network downtime is entirely preventable, and we’re going to be talking about everything you need to know about it in this article.

What Is Network Downtime?

Network downtime is when your systems are not functioning properly for their primary purpose, meaning that your business cannot operate correctly. For example, if your computer network stops working and you cannot get into any of the data or files that your company needs, this would be counted as downtime as nobody can get their job done.

Downtime can refer to a single application or computer, a single server, or an entire network. The system could be temporarily unavailable, offline or simply unable to operate, but it costs your business a lot of money, even for a short period of downtime.

The Causes Of Network Failure

The leading cause of network failure is actually human error. For example, if someone forgets to update the software, or if the server has not been upgraded to suit all of the data that a business has. Another cause of network failure due to human error is forgetting to regularly add security patches, leaving your business vulnerable.

Old equipment can also be a cause of network failure. If you are using old, outdated equipment, it is bound to be slower, and potentially give up a lot easier than if you were using newer pieces. As such, you should think about updating your tech to avoid this problem.

How To Prevent Downtime

Create a Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan

The first thing that you can do to prevent downtime is to create a disaster recovery plan. This is a document that details what steps are to be taken in the face of unplanned instances. In this document, you will list the crucial pieces of IT and equipment that are going to be needed, outline the steps that are going to need to be taken to restart the business, and also the steps that will be needed to reconfigure the network. This way, everyone knows what needs to be done when this happens, meaning it can be sorted as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Engage in Proactive Monitoring

If you are constantly watching your network, or you hire someone to do this, then you should be able to identify an issue before it becomes a major problem. Getting it early means that you have a higher chance of avoiding it altogether. There are companies that you can hire who will monitor your servers, or you can do it yourself, getting your employees to keep an eye out for anything.

Ensure that if anyone has any concerns, they bring them to you so that you can work out how to handle the issue that is presenting itself. Ensure that you listen to all concerns so that you have the best chance of avoiding bigger problems.

Invest in Managed Services

Managed services are specialist IT services that can aid your business in a number of ways. Managed router services particularly are helpful as it allows an outside company to handle the provisioning, configuration, monitoring of the hardware and any change management when it comes to this.

One of the main benefits of using managed router services is the fact that your company will likely experience fewer issues. When your IT is in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, you can be sure that you won’t have to worry about all the little things. They will take care of everything for you, protecting your business from threats, as well as constantly keeping the software updated so this doesn’t crash.

Managed services will be able to avoid you having to have costly delays in your business. Every time that your network or server goes down, your business is essentially bleeding money. Managed router services would be able to pick up on the fact that something was wrong, and take every possible step to prevent it. Even when there was no issue in sight, this kind of service ensures that things are kept on top of, minimizing the risk of an issue developing in the first place.

What Happens When a Managed Router Detects a Network Issue?

A managed router typically follows a structured incident-response workflow when it detects a network issue:

1. Detection: The router or monitoring platform detects an issue such as packet loss, interface failure, high latency, link degradation, or routing problems.
2. Alert validation: The managed service team verifies the alert to determine whether it is a genuine incident, a transient condition, or a false positive.
3. Troubleshooting: Engineers review router logs, interface status, routing tables, connectivity, configurations, and related network devices to identify the cause.
4. Escalation: If the issue requires additional expertise, vendor involvement, on-site support, or action from the customer’s internal IT team, it is escalated according to the defined workflow and SLA.
5. Remediation: Authorized engineers implement corrective actions, such as restoring a failed link, adjusting routing, correcting configuration issues, or coordinating hardware replacement.
6. Documentation: Record the incident, troubleshooting steps, changes, timestamps, and resolution in the ticketing or ITSM system.
7. Closure: Verify connectivity and performance, update stakeholders, and close the incident once the agreed resolution criteria are met.

How can Managed Router Services Prevent WAN Outages?

Managed router services can help prevent or reduce WAN outages by continuously monitoring WAN connectivity and using proactive controls:

• WAN link monitoring: Continuously monitors link availability, interface health, bandwidth utilization, and connectivity to detect degradation or failures early.
• Automatic failover: Routes traffic to a secondary WAN connection when the primary link becomes unavailable or falls below defined performance thresholds.
• Path redundancy: Uses multiple WAN links, providers, or network paths to reduce dependence on a single connection.
• Latency and packet-loss monitoring: Tracks latency, jitter, and packet loss to identify degraded links before they cause significant application or connectivity problems.
• Provider escalation: When the managed service team detects an outage or carrier-side problem, it can escalate the issue to the ISP or carrier and coordinate troubleshooting and restoration.
• Proactive remediation: Depending on the service scope, engineers can investigate recurring issues, adjust routing or failover policies, and recommend capacity or connectivity changes to reduce the risk of future outages.

What Network Downtime SLA should Businesses Expect from Managed Router Services?

No single network downtime SLA applies to every business. The appropriate commitment depends on the provider, network architecture, WAN redundancy, and service scope. When evaluating an SLA, businesses should review:

• Monitoring coverage: Confirm whether WAN and router monitoring is 24/7 and which devices, links, and performance metrics are covered.
• Response time: Check how quickly the provider commits to acknowledging and beginning work on a detected incident.
• Escalation time: Review how quickly critical incidents are escalated to senior engineers, network providers, or other responsible teams.
• Uptime commitment: Determine the guaranteed availability percentage and exactly how uptime is measured.
• MTTR targets: Look for a defined mean time to repair/restore target for different incident severities rather than relying only on an uptime percentage.
• Exclusions: Check whether scheduled maintenance, ISP failures, customer-caused incidents, force majeure events, or unsupported equipment are excluded from SLA calculations.
• Service credits: Understand whether missed SLA commitments qualify for service credits and how those credits are calculated and claimed.

For business-critical WAN environments, the SLA should therefore be evaluated as a complete incident-management commitment, not simply as an advertised uptime percentage.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that can minimize costly network downtime!