As organizations become more reliant on technology, the stakes are higher and more devastating when there are failures. One of the components of reliability is availability. In telecommunications data networking, high availability refers to a system that is continuously operational.

Reliability can be measured relative to “100% operational” or “never failing”. A widely-held but difficult-to-achieve standard of reliability for a network is known as “Five 9s” (99.999 percent) availability.

Availability as defined in terms of “Nines”
Availability Downtime Per Year Typical Usage
95% 18 days Home Computing
99% 3.5 days Traditional data center
99.9% 8¾ hours Web server
99.99% 53 minutes E-Commerce
99.999% 5¼ minutes Network Infrastructure



A major contributing component that offers reliability in a network infrastructure is the use of SONET technology. The architecture used in SONET technology, SONET rings, known as self-healing rings,” use two or more transmissions paths between network nodes, which are typically cross-connects (DCSs) or add/drop multiplexers (ADMS) or more simply, a redundant copy. If a disruption occurs,

the network switches to the redundant copy to insure continuous data transfer.

Syringa Networks utilizes the technologies, equipment and infrastructure that gives the high reliability of “Five 9s” to provide assurances for our customers who must minimize network failures for their mission critical applications.