Open Thread: Redundant Internet for the Home Office?

It was one of those times that cause people to quote the omniscient Murphy. I was not only staring at the cold, hard reality of an oncoming deadline. I was also watching in horror as the little winking light that indicated my Internet status glowed red. Like most Internet routers green means go. Red means the series of tubes that brings the Internets to my house needs some Draino. Worse yet, having a VoIP phone meant I couldn’t even call for an ETA for when things would be restored.

Many corporate clients keep their workers happily productive (or at least on YouTube) by having multiple paths to the Internet. This redundancy ensures that if one service suffers a setback the wheels of commerce continue to churn. But is this a practical expense for a home based worker? Are there flexible business options that can be purchased on a house-by-house basis or am I stuck with the consumer level DSL and/or Cable options in my area? And if I do have multiple connections to the wider web are there intelligent ways of optimizing the bandwidth? Fail over? Load balancing? Or is this the powers-that-be telling me its time to go to the local coffee shop?

Am I the only one who gets nervous about placing all my productivity eggs in one ISP’s basket? What have you done to avoid net downtime?

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