Frequently Asked Questions
General Connectivity
What is Akative ZeroDowntime®?
Akative ZeroDowntime® is the core mission of our connectivity ecosystem, dedicated to eliminating the risks of the digital divide for every business. By enhancing services with autonomous, local processing and self-healing technology, we provide more resilient infrastructure required to ensure your mission-critical applications remain online. Our goal is to make reliable connectivity invisible and stress-free.
Why have a backup connection?
Internet outages aren’t a question of if, but when. You need a backup connection to protect your revenue and reputation from the high costs of internet downtime. By providing an automated failover layer, Akative ensures mission-critical applications like VoIP and POS systems remain productive. This resilient infrastructure eliminates operational disruptions and reduces the labor costs associated with manual intervention.
Why should I use a dedicated Akative device instead of a mobile hotspot?
Mobile hotspots are simply not designed for failover or continuous business operations. They require manual activation, meaning your business stays offline until someone physically turns them on—a far cry from our automatic, seamless failover. Furthermore, consumer hotspots rarely receive critical security patches and lack the processing power to sustain high-demand business applications (like POS systems). Akative provides enterprise-grade hardware that is fully managed, automatically updated, and built to keep your operations running 24/7 without manual intervention.
Can I use Akative if I already have a contract with an ISP?
Yes. Akative is designed to be ISP-agnostic. We act as your safety net, sitting alongside your current provider (Fiber, Cable, or DSL) to ensure that when they have an outage, your business stays online.
Is Akative hardware difficult to set up with my existing firewall?
Not at all. Akative solutions are designed for seamless integration. Every device is preconfigured by our engineers to work with your existing network stack and firewall, allowing for a "plug-and-play" installation that requires minimal downtime.
How fast does the failover switch happen when my primary ISP goes down?
Our Automatic Failover is designed for near-instant transitions. In most cases, the switch to our business-optimized cellular network happens so quickly that your POS systems, cloud applications, and VoIP phones stay connected without manual intervention.
What type of connectivity do Akative solutions use and what are the typical speeds?
Akative solutions utilize professional 5G and 4G LTE connectivity. While speeds vary by location, ideal 5G conditions reach 3.4 Gbps/900 Mbps and are backward compatible with CAT-20 LTE at 1.6 Gbps/200 Mbps. Standard CAT-4 LTE provides 150 Mbps/50 Mbps. Our expert team ensures your connection is optimized for the best available carrier signal and consistent performance.
Who installs Akative solutions and how long does it take?
Most customers perform the onsite installation themselves in 5 to 60 minutes, depending on the specific solution. Akative provides clear instructions and expert remote assistance to activate your SIM and confirm optimal carrier coverage. This approach ensures your preconfigured hardware is online and protecting your operations without the need for complex onsite overhauls.
How does Akative protect my business’s privacy and data security?
We take a layered approach to security. All Akative connectivity solutions are fully managed, meaning our team proactively pushes security patches and software updates to your hardware so your protection is always current. We do not perform packet captures, ensuring your business and employee activity remains private.
To go beyond this baseline, our iStatus® hardware is designed with a "stealth" architecture; it has no open ports or services and only initiates outbound traffic, making it incredibly difficult for outside threats to compromise. Additionally, iStatus includes a built-in security suite to further harden your local network, giving you a level of protection that standard backup routers simply cannot provide.
Are Akative solutions compatible with PCI-compliant environments?
Yes, all Akative connectivity solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with PCI-compliant environments. We provide a secure connectivity tunnel and proactive monitoring without accessing your internal network data. With regular firmware updates and secure architecture, Akative primary and backup connections support your compliance status.
What is the difference between Akative business data and consumer cellular plans?
Consumer plans are often "best-effort" and subject to heavy throttling or deprioritization during peak times. Akative utilizes business-optimized data across multiple Tier-1 carriers. This ensures your traffic is prioritized, providing the consistent speeds and reliability needed to keep your operations running while others face congestion.
Can I monitor multiple branch locations from a single dashboard?
Yes, you can monitor multiple branch locations from a single dashboard through the iStatus® platform. iStatus unifies all of your Akative connectivity solutions into one non-technical pane-of-glass. This centralized view allows IT teams to verify network health, track data usage, and receive real-time alerts for every location across your entire organizational footprint.
What is data pooling and what are its business benefits?
Data pooling unifies your cellular data across multiple locations into a single shared resource for like plans, regardless of the carrier. This model mitigates expensive overage fees by allowing sites with lower usage to offset those with higher demand. Managed by Akative, data pooling provides the financial predictability and scalability required for multi-site organizations to grow without connectivity stress.
How does Connectivity-as-a-Service™ (CaaS) simplify network management?
Connectivity-as-a-Service™ (CaaS) is a turn-key model that unifies enterprise-grade hardware, professional 5G & 4G LTE data, and proactive monitoring into a single managed layer. By consolidating your network needs through one partner, our expert team eliminates the complexity of multi-vendor management. This "Zero Labor" approach provides a seamless plug-and-play experience that reduces organizational downtime.
RocketFailover
What is RocketFailover and how does it work?
RocketFailover is a fully managed connectivity solution designed to ensure business continuity by automatically switching your traffic to a business-optimized cellular network if your primary ISP fails. It works through a three-step process: our engineers preconfigure the solution to integrate with your network, our iStatus® platform proactively monitors your connection health, and the hardware automatically handles the failover and failback to keep your mission-critical applications online.
Do I need to replace my current router to use RocketFailover?
No, you do not need to replace your existing equipment. Our solutions are engineered to fit into your current network stack. Whether you use our RocketFailover Autopilot™ configuration for a simple plug-and-play setup with any router or RocketFailover Fusion™ to integrate directly with your own dual-WAN firewall, RocketFailover is designed to work with your existing hardware.
What is "Sticky Failover" and how do you prevent it?
"Sticky Failover" occurs when your network traffic remains on the backup cellular connection even after your primary ISP has been restored. This can lead to unnecessary data consumption and increased costs. We prevent this through intelligent management that monitors the stability of your primary link and automatically returns your traffic to the main connection once it is fully restored.
Is the 5G/4G connection secure for credit card processing?
Yes. RocketFailover is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing PCI-compliant environments. Our solutions provide a secure connectivity tunnel and proactive connection monitoring without accessing your network data or monitoring internal internet activity. We provide regular firmware patching and updates to our hardware and software to maintain the performance and security of our service, ensuring our connectivity does not negatively impact your overall compliance status.
Does RocketFailover include a static IP address?
Yes, our business-optimized plans include an optional static IP address at no additional cost. This is a standard feature of our service, ensuring that your remote operations, VPNs, and internal systems remain accessible and consistent even when your network switches to the backup connection.
How fast can I be back online after an outage?
RocketFailover provides a seamless transition, meaning your mission-critical applications—like POS systems and cloud services—stay online automatically when a failure is detected. For new deployments, our Live-In-Five™ pre-configured hardware is designed to be plugged in and fully operational in under five minutes.
Can I only failover part of my network traffic to RocketFailover?
Yes. Many organizations choose to failover only mission-critical traffic while excluding non-essential networks, such as guest Wi-Fi, to reduce data consumption. Through flexible failover settings and firewall configurations, you can segment and prioritize specific traffic. Our expert team is happy to assist you in preconfiguring these rules to ensure your backup connection supports your most essential operations.
Is RocketFailover compatible with any firewall/router/gateway?
Yes. RocketFailover® is designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing network stack, including single-WAN routers and dual-WAN firewalls. With three distinct deployment methods, our solutions provide a plug-and-play experience. To identify which version of RocketFailover best matches your specific firewall brand, please visit our Firewall Compatibilities page for our simple matching guide.
iStatus
What is iStatus® and what does it monitor?
iStatus® is a managed connectivity and network monitoring platform that acts as the "glue-layer" for your internet providers, cloud services, and hardware. It provides real-time visibility into network health, monitoring everything from primary line stability and 5G/4G backup readiness to the performance of specific cloud applications and mission-critical IoT devices.
What is ConnectionValidation™ and how does it protect my network?
ConnectionValidation is a patented feature that continuously tests and validates every internet connection monitored on your network to ensure backup readiness. It visualizes status through a time-correlated timeline graph, allowing you to easily correlate connectivity events across all locations. This proactive layer provides the peace of mind verification needed for uninterrupted organizational success.
How do iStatus IntelligentAlerts™ prevent information overload?
IntelligentAlerts™ eliminate technical noise by utilizing Bulk Notifications to group similar network events into single, understandable updates. You can also configure the Business Hours feature to bundle after-hours alerts into one comprehensive email delivered at the start of your next workday, ensuring you receive only pertinent insights when you need them most.
Is the iStatus hardware secure for my business network?
The iStatus device is a highly secure, proprietary IoT device engineered with no open ports or services to protect your network integrity. It provides 24/7 real-time monitoring without accessing your internal network data or monitoring internal internet activity. With regular firmware updates and secure architecture, iStatus ensures your monitoring remains safe for even the most stringent PCI-compliant environments.
Does iStatus provide real-time visibility into SD-WAN traffic?
Using iStatus FlowTracking, SD-WAN traffic flows can be observed. This allows you to know how your SD-WAN rules are performing using time-correlated timelines, providing uptime state information for all of your internet connections as well as the status of AkativeSD. With this visibility you can ensure high-priority applications always have the resilient infrastructure required for uninterrupted operations.
Can I access the iStatus® Dashboard from my mobile device?
You can access the full iStatus Dashboard from any device, including smartphones and tablets. For rapid assessment, iStatus provides mobile widgets that offer a 5-second connectivity overview without requiring a login, while Apple iOS Home Screen shortcuts allow you to navigate instantly to your most-used network health features.
InternetAnywhere
What is InternetAnywhere® and how does it work?
InternetAnywhere® is a managed cellular solution providing high-speed internet via 5G & 4G LTE for sites where traditional infrastructure is unavailable. Akative handles the preconfiguration and carrier management, delivering a turn-key connection that works immediately upon arrival, ensuring your business stays online in any location.
Do I need to provide my own hardware or data plan?
No. InternetAnywhere is a turn-key solution that includes enterprise-grade hardware and business-optimized data plans. We eliminate the complexity of sourcing from multiple vendors by providing a fully managed, plug-and-play package. This "Zero Labor" approach ensures you have a professional connection without the headache of manual setup or hardware configuration.
Is the hardware durable enough for remote or outdoor environments?
Yes. InternetAnywhere utilizes hardy and ruggedized hardware engineered to perform in extreme weather and challenging environments. Whether deployed at a remote construction trailer, a rural farm, or a mobile clinic, our equipment is designed for durability and consistent performance where consumer-grade devices often fail to maintain a stable connection.
How do I monitor my data usage?
You can monitor your data usage in real-time through the patented iStatus® platform using our secure online dashboard or mobile app. iStatus provides an integrated usage bar for instant clarity across multiple locations. To keep you informed, iStatus delivers customizable usage alerts via email or push notifications as you approach your data limits.
How fast can I get a new site online with InternetAnywhere?
With our Live-In-Five™ technology, new deployments are typically online in under five minutes. Because your hardware arrives preconfigured for your specific network needs, there is no onsite labor required. Si Simply plug in the device and connect to the WiFi using the provided password to establish a professional, high-speed connection immediately, eliminating the long installation delays of traditional providers.
AkativeSD
What is AkativeSD™ and how does it differ from standard backup?
AkativeSD™ is a managed backup solution designed for SD-WAN and latency-sensitive networks. Unlike traditional backup solutions that may have a brief reconnection period, AkativeSD provides uninterrupted connectivity by switching connections without dropping active network sessions. This ensures your business-critical applications stay online during network transitions with no "offline" state.
How does AkativeSD™ protect business-critical applications like VoIP?
AkativeSD™ utilizes seamless failover technology to maintain persistent sessions during network transitions. Because there is no lag or reconnection gap, VoIP calls do not drop and cloud-based applications remain active. This allows your business to attain uninterrupted performance and maintain professional service standards regardless of your primary provider’s status.
Can I choose which traffic uses the cellular backup connection?
Yes. AkativeSD™ enables granular traffic steering, allowing you to prioritize mission-critical data over the best available connection. By steering traffic away from congested paths and toward the highest-quality link, you improve overall application performance and ensure your most vital systems always have the bandwidth they need to operate efficiently.
What visibility does SD-WAN FlowTracking™ provide?
SD-WAN FlowTracking™ provides real-time visibility into your network’s data paths. By observing traffic flows through time-correlated timelines, you can verify how your SD-WAN rules are performing and where your traffic is located across all sites. This monitoring tool empowers your team with the data-dense insights needed to verify network health.
How do I know the cellular backup is ready when I need it?
AkativeSD™ utilizes ConnectionValidation™ to proactively test and validate your cellular data connections. Instead of waiting for a primary failure to occur, our system continuously verifies the secondary path’s readiness. This automated testing ensures that when an outage occurs, your professional-grade cellular backup is verified and ready to maintain connectivity.
Does AkativeSD™ work with my existing network hardware?
AkativeSD™ is engineered to integrate with your existing network infrastructure and SD-WAN stack. For a quicker installation, our team preconfigures your device for your specific network use-case. While you may need to set up firewall policies for granular traffic steering, AkativeSD is a fully managed solution where our expert team handles carrier management and hardware/software updates for you.
How does granular traffic steering improve network performance?
AkativeSD™ utilizes granular traffic steering to optimize network performance by prioritizing business-critical applications over the best available connection. By dynamically routing high-priority traffic to avoid congested links, our solution maintains uninterrupted performance for VoIP and cloud services, ensuring your most essential operations never experience lag or disruption during network transitions.