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Business fiber connections typically deliver 99.9%–99.99% uptime (SLA-backed), with symmetric upload/download and 3-6 hour mean time to repair (MTTR). Consumer broadband is around 99.5% uptime, often asymmetric (10:1 down/up ratio), with no SLA and days-to-weeks MTTR. For a 500-person office, the difference between 99.5% and 99.9% is roughly 15 hours of downtime per year versus 4 hours.
Broadband is the fastest-moving piece of WAN technology. What was cutting-edge three years ago (gigabit fiber to the home) is now table stakes. The comparison below gives you the current landscape as of 2026 — expect this to keep changing.
| Technology | Typical speed | Symmetry | Latency | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DSL (ADSL/VDSL) | 1–100 Mbps | Asymmetric (usually) | 20-40 ms | Wherever there's copper |
| Cable (DOCSIS 3.1/4.0) | 100 Mbps – 10 Gbps | Asymmetric (usually) | 10-25 ms | Most urban/suburban |
| Fiber (FTTP) | 100 Mbps – 10 Gbps | Symmetric | 1-10 ms | Growing coverage |
| Fixed wireless (5G/LTE) | 25 Mbps – 1 Gbps | Asymmetric | 20-50 ms | Rural, backup |
| Satellite (LEO/GEO) | 25 Mbps – 1 Gbps | Symmetric (LEO) | 20-600 ms | Anywhere (Starlink, etc.) |
Business fiber is symmetric — 1 Gbps up AND down. Consumer fiber often isn't. This matters for VPN concentrators, cloud backups, video conferencing, and any workload that uploads. If your WAN design has 1 Gbps download but 40 Mbps upload, upload-bound traffic (backups, video calls, VPN to cloud) will suffer.
A business location with only consumer broadband is running on borrowed time. The MTTR alone — days or weeks for a consumer connection versus hours for business — can be devastating for an office. Business circuits cost more because they come with commitments you can actually enforce.
Two internet circuits from the same provider might share physical infrastructure — cut one fiber bundle and both go down. True diversity means different providers, different entry paths, different carrier networks. For critical sites, this usually means one fiber circuit plus one cable or LTE backup, entering the building from different directions.
Look up circuit diversity in your own context. If you have internet at a critical site, call the provider and ask: 'Where does the fiber enter the building, and is there a backup path?' If they can't answer, you have hidden single points of failure.
Finish the lesson once you have worked through the material. This awards ★ 15 XP.