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Your internet connection is one of the most vital business decisions you can make. There's just no two ways about it; from video conferences to emails to research to even a cute cat video break, you need the right kind of internet connection. Getting the most out of internet providers, therefore, becomes crucial to overall operations. But what should you be looking for?

The notion of a better network is different for most everybody, but some common facets emerge. Issues of speed and latency are naturally important, but so too is the issue of cloud adoption rates. These issues all go hand-in-hand to make a better network, and where one improves, the other two are likely to improve as well.

Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) has fundamentally changed networking technology in a host of ways. It's changed so much, in fact, that some think WAN optimization itself is a dead art, lost forever against the greater efficiency of SD-WAN. That's not strictly true, but not too far off. There are still ways to optimize a WAN, thanks in large part to SD-WAN itself.

Is it time to get rid of the wide-area network (WAN)? Some would say it is, but almost as many would say that it's just time for a better WAN. Making a WAN better calls for some fairly serious changes, but those changes can make the system more ready to take on the ever-increasing demands of modern business.

For all businesses, Internet access is crucial. It can, however, be difficult to decide on the form of Internet access that is best for your company. While some businesses often default to fiber, fixed wireless is an option that should be more closely considered.

Microwaves do more than heat up food -- they can be used to communicate. And microwave transmission technology is an excellent way for businesses to connect to the internet and take advantage of cloud-based services. The benefits don't stop there, however.

Network downtime is, on a certain level, unavoidable. We do what we can to minimize and protect against it, but it still happens. With an Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) Research study finding that an hour of downtime costs 98% of businesses at least $100,000, it's worth protecting against. Downtime doesn't just cost that six-figure hit, however...it costs a lot more than that.

Fixed wireless offers several advantages that make it able to address many of the connectivity problems we see in business.

Digital transformation; as the name suggests, it's a complete transformation of even the most basic business and organizational processes. It's taking businesses from “the way we've always done it” to “how we'll be doing it tomorrow.” Yet we don't make that leap in isolation. We need the right kind of network to make our transformation truly occur.

• Latency. Mobile internet has a much greater latency than fixed wireless. It takes longer for the signal to run the circuit of cellular towers than it does the comparatively point-to-point access provided by fixed wireless.
• Speed. Fixed wireless is much faster than mobile internet, for much the same reason as its low latency. The method of data provision is faster with fixed wireless, so the connections are faster in turn.
• Bandwidth. Fixed wireless commonly offers much greater bandwidth access than mobile bandwidth, owing mainly to the nature of the connection. Those cell towers are used by everyone in the vicinity, while the point-to-point connection of fixed wireless is generally only used by one party.
• Portability. Mobile internet's big advantage is its portability. It goes most everywhere voice traffic goes. Fixed wireless, meanwhile, requires a line-of-sight connection, or close to it, to produce a connection. Thus, fixed wireless is commonly seen in denser traffic areas.