This blog post is for small business owners contemplating a simple question: Does my small business need an enterprise-grade router? A simple question deserves a simple answer, so that’s what you’ll get here — not an avalanche of terminology, just solid, actionable advice.
But first, a brief overview is in order. Let’s talk about what a router even is — in plain English — and go over two broad categories of routers: home routers and enterprise-grade routers.
What Even IS a Router?
A router, simply put, is a little computer — physical or virtual — that allows multiple devices in a single network to ‘talk to’ each other and to the internet. A router directs, or ‘routes,’ packets of information within the network, so that the information ends up at the right place. For instance, if you want to print something at your small business, your router makes sure the information gets sent to the printer.
In short, routers coordinate where data flows within a network — between devices, to and from the internet. If you’re a business owner, you can think of your router as the hub of your organization’s entire IT infrastructure.
Home Routers vs. Enterprise-Grade Routers
There are various types of routers, and it’s easy to get lost in the dizzying number of features and functions that distinguish them from one another, but routers can be divided into two general categories: home routers (a.k.a. “consumer-grade routers”) and enterprise-grade routers (a.k.a. “business routers,” “business-class routers,” or “commercial routers”).
Home routers and business routers serve the same basic function — routing traffic within a network — but there are important differences between the two.
The overarching difference is — you guessed it — home routers are designed primarily for use in the home, while business routers are designed primarily to be used by businesses.
But this doesn’t tell us very much. So, let’s dig into what actually separates the two types of routers, with an eye to answering the simple question: Which one should you be using at your small to medium-sized business (SMB)?
Home Routers vs Business Routers: Breaking Down the Differences
Cost
Business routers are much more sophisticated, secure, and reliable than home routers, and for this reason, they cost more. A typical business router runs from $500 to several thousand dollars, while home routers generally cost less than $100. For this reason, a lot of SMB owners go with the latter, thinking it’s a frugal decision that will save their business money.
But the truth is, business routers are only more expensive initially; over time, a business router will likely save your business money — and lots of it! By the end of this blog post, it should be clear why.
Security
The superior security that enterprise-grade routers offer businesses is, by itself, a good reason NOT to use a home router at your organization. Cybercrime is rampant in this day and age, and contrary to widespread belief, it’s not just large corporations that get hit by cyberattacks. In fact, hackers are increasingly targeting smaller companies because they know ‘the little guy’ tends to lack robust security.
If you’re skeptical, here are some stats to help you wake up and smell the danger:
If more business owners knew just how common cyberattacks have become, we’d surely see a greater level of investment in cybersecurity. But, shockingly, 43% of SMBs don’t have any kind of cybersecurity plan in place.
Simply put, if you’re a small business owner and security is a priority — which it should be — it’s more than sensible to go with a business router over a home router; it’s essential. Most home routers now come with a basic firewall, but the problem is, it takes a lot more than that to fend off the incredibly sophisticated cyberattacks hackers deploy these days.
For example, ZuoRAT is a next generation threat which targets SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) routers. It spies on you and your network, allows threats to become persistent, and can cost your business with downtime or further compromise.
Support
Routers, like any hardware, need to be maintained, updated, patched, etc. If your business uses a consumer-grade router, this can quickly become a huge hassle. Patching a home router can be difficult and time-consuming — especially when you throw compliance into the mix — and in many cases, it’s downright impossible. In a lot of cases, ‘patching’ or ‘updating’ a home router means throwing it away and purchasing a newer model.
Home routers do a lot with very little, but there’s a new model every year. And while enterprise equipment has an expected lifespan, consumer-grade isn’t necessarily promised a single update, and manufacturers can lack the resources to fix a nasty bug. Moreover, consumer-grade routers cut corners for components like flash storage or RAM, limiting their flexibility. They also use a patchwork of disparate software, which creates difficulties around maintenance. And, with built-in obsolescence, vendors can’t always keep home routers up-to-date, even if they wish to do so.
Bottom line — when you purchase a business router, your contract with the vendor will ensure a level of support that you simply can’t get for a home router.
Quality & Features
When it comes to quality, the difference between home and business routers tends to be vast. Your typical home router requires regular rebooting, which means one thing for your business: DOWNTIME! How costly is downtime? Let’s just say the upfront cost of purchasing a business router looks like pocket change compared to the cost of severe downtime. Check out this blog post to learn more.
In short, an enterprise-grade router is designed to last multiple years, even a whole decade or more, while home routers are designed to be thrown away after a year or two.
And when it comes to features, business routers blow home routers out of the water. Take, for instance, a VPN (virtual private network). In this age of remote work, VPNs are essential to ensuring that remote workers can access your organization’s network safely and securely. And, although most home routers boast some kind of VPN, a business router will give you a built-in VPN that is significantly more effective (i.e., secure and reliable). If some of your workforce is remote, a powerful VPN isn’t a luxury, but a necessity.
Scalability
If you want to grow your business, you’ll want a router that scales easily to support more devices, users, data, etc. In other words, you’ll want an enterprise-grade router. Business routers, unlike home routers, scale easily as your business grows.
Business-class hardware is made to connect far more systems in far more intricate ways than virtually any consumer-grade router. You can plug a 24-port switch (or more than one) into nearly any business router, which would bring a home router to a grinding halt — or crash it entirely.
And hardware is just part of the equation. Software is different between the standard consumer-grade router and an enterprise device. A consumer-grade router may allow certain features, but they don’t always play well together. The difference is between a device that may do something and one that will do something.
Summing Up
A business-class router is appropriately named, as it is suitable for use by businesses. Opting for a home router to save money in the short-term is likely to come back and bite you, as home routers simply aren’t equipped to evolve with technological change, defend against sophisticated cyberattacks, or scale with your business.
Spending a little more on an enterprise-grade router now is almost guaranteed to save you money in a long run. Indeed, when you zoom out and consider the overall benefits of a business router, it’s clear that purchasing one for your SMB isn’t so much a cost as it is a wise investment that can ‘future-proof’ your growing organization.
Picking the right router for your small business is an important decision, but wading through the plethora of options can be stressful and confusing. Working with a managed service provider (MSP) is a great way to ensure that not only your router, but your entire IT infrastructure, is optimized for your business’s specific needs and goals. Remember, business is better when IT runs smoothly!
by Tom Darnall
Managing one print environment can be hard enough. Managing several at the same time can seem downright daunting. And for MSPs whose cost structures are highly sensitive to extra investment of time and resources, every second spent struggling with a print management issue can weigh heavily on the bottom line.
MSPs have another fundamental concern: customer satisfaction. Unlike an organization where print infrastructure is managed in-house, an MSP’s end users can decide to contract with another provider. That puts particular importance on retaining existing customers, which means that quality of service has to remain uncompromisingly high. Ongoing printing problems, even minor ones that might be tolerated elsewhere, can put an MSP out of business.
The catch is that, in addition to those challenges, MSPs also have a unique set of print-management requirements. Ideally, they want a single, uniform solution that allows them to deliver a core suite of services to customers while also providing a consistent management experience. Yet MSPs’ customers can have very different environments and a wide variety of printing needs, so any solution also has to be versatile enough to accommodate these disparities.
With that in mind, a print-management solution optimized for MSPs should meet the following criteria:
Powerful: Admins have access to a comprehensive suite of printer- and driver-management tools, including advanced features.
Intuitive: Profile settings as well as automated deployments and installations are easy to configure with granular precision.
Versatile: The solution integrates seamlessly with any environment without sacrificing reliability, functionality or ease of use.
Robust: Single points of failure and WAN dependencies are either reduced or eliminated completely, ensuring maximum uptime and uninterrupted printing.
Centralized: The MSP is able to fully manage the print environment for every customer, no matter how distributed, from a single pane of glass.
Consistent: The administrative experience is the same across the entire customer pool, regardless of differences in printer fleets or printing habits.
Streamlined: Administrative tasks are as efficient as possible and don’t require multiple interactions when one will do.
Scalable: The print-management solution effortlessly adapts as the customer’s print environment shrinks, expands or evolves over time.
Another consideration is that any print-management solution truly geared toward MSPs should also offer opportunities to add value. For example, one customer might want secure printing capabilities, whereas another wants to implement cross-platform mobile and BYOD printing. An MSP who’s able to provide this kind of added value with minimal physical infrastructure and low administrative overhead is going to be much more attractive to those customers.
PrinterLogic meets these demanding MSP criteria
Although traditional print-management solutions like print servers can’t fulfill all those demanding criteria, PrinterLogic’s enterprise print-management solutions are able to meet them without reservation.
PrinterLogic’s next-generation software uniquely combines the simplicity and reliability of direct-IP printing with the power of centralized management, enabling MSPs to manage the print environments of their entire customer pool from a single web-based console. This also gives PrinterLogic core capabilities like eliminating print servers, advanced printer deployments without the need for GPOs or scripts, self-service printer installations, and seamless integration alongside virtual solutions.
That’s not just theoretical. MSPs like Helion Automotive Technologies and Strata Information Technology have implemented PrinterLogic’s low-footprint, on-premises software solution for their customers in very different sectors. Helion, focuses on the automotive industry, supplying 650 car dealerships and their 28,000 employees with core IT services. Strata IT draws some of its largest customers from the healthcare industry.
Both MSPs saw a massive reduction in the time spent on print management after implementing PrinterLogic. Strata IT immediately experienced an estimated 50% drop in print-related support tickets, whereas Helion has leveraged PrinterLogic to cut 20 hours off each of its regular print-server migrations. The two MSPs also cited increased customer satisfaction as a result of their increased responsiveness, the reduced number of routine printing problems and the improved visibility into new areas of the print environment, such as consumable costs.
The next-gen features you expect from a next-gen solution
PrinterLogic also offers a SaaS counterpart. This zero-footprint, cloud-based solution offers feature parity with PrinterLogic’s proven on-premises software, giving MSPs and their customers the option of a flexible, enterprise-grade print-management solution that is infinitely scalable and incredibly cost-effective. Pioneer Technology is just one MSP that is using PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution to further its “cloud-first” philosophy and retain a competitive edge among peers in the banking, healthcare and retail industries.
And when it comes to adding value, PrinterLogic is able to provide native pull printing and mobile printing capabilities along with comprehensive print auditing tools. This kind of advanced functionality is increasingly sought after by organizations that are looking to harden their print security, provide tightly controlled but full-featured printing to their BYOD users, or gain insight into printing habits for the sake of cost-cutting and efficiency.
Tom Darnall recently joined the product team at PrinterLogic. He moved to Utah four years ago from Portland, where he held executive, product management and marketing positions at HP, Symantec, and other software firms. Tom received a B.A. in Communications from Brigham Young University and completed a summer executive MBA program at Stanford. Off the clock, Tom loves to explore the desert southwest, do landscape photography, and see live jazz in Las Vegas.
To learn more about The 20 and how we can help your business, be sure to check us out here.
Are you like me, where this question is routinely hanging out in the back of your mind every time you’re jumping on or off your computer?
I finally broke down and Googled it.
For the most part, the internet seems united in its conclusion, but I thought I would also provide some additional insight on the issue itself. Enjoy!
So, First Things First — What’s the Problem Here?
Well, we all know that pulling the power to a computer abruptly (via the wall outlet), without shutting down properly, could do damage. But the questions here are:
A) “Is my computer at risk from routine shutdowns and startups?”
B) “How do routine shutdowns and startups compare to just leaving the computer on all the time (important clarification: SLEEP MODE)?”
The Experts Say
Apparently, it depends on how often you use it. If you use your computer multiple times per day, it’s best to leave it on. However, if you use it for short periods of time (under a few hours), and once a day, then you should turn it off.
And then the risks of course are greater the older your computer is. And a handful of other caveats like traditional hard disk drives vs. solid state drives, etc. etc.
Advantages of the Shutdown
While your computer still draws a little bit of power when shutdown (unless it’s unplugged from the wall), it still remains a better energy-saving option than putting it to sleep.
Sleep mode draws more power (most noticeably with the RAM), which means an increase in electricity usage. I know that’s less about the computer than it is electricity, but it’s a con nonetheless.
Shutdowns also allow for the greatness of the reboot. These can be great ways for an operating system to clean itself out. These cleanings can take care of bugs, leaked memory, and unused network connections. Not to mention, if you have your computer set to auto-update, a shutdown is good for those installs that you always put off (is that just me?).
Also, random power surges can damage your computer when powered on or in sleep mode. And we’re talking file corruption, data loss, you name it. I know those surges are rare, but shutting down certainly lowers the odds of vulnerability.
Advantages of Sleep Mode
First and foremost, the ability to move your mouse around to wake it up and get to work is outstanding. It makes life so much easier. Waiting for your computer to boot up when you have stuff to do is such a beating.
Background maintenance is also a plus. Your computer likes to run things like virus scans, disk cleanup, and system backups, particularly during evening hours while your computer is asleep. Unless you schedule these tasks to be done during daytime hours, shutting off your computer may interfere with these necessary programs, which may leave your computer more open to malware.
In the End…
It depends.
It depends on your use.
From what I’ve read, both are acceptable. Obviously shutting down cuts down on electricity, but as for your computer itself, both work. Computers today are built to withstand mode changes. Now of course, every once and awhile, you should shut down for the reasons mentioned above, and you shouldn’t shutdown constantly like it’s an ON/OFF switch, but if you’re using your computer once a day and in small doses, shutting down is probably the way to do it. If you’re always on it, just let it nap and it’ll be fine.
