What Is an Upstream Internet Provider and How Does It Affect Me?

Internet Service Providers, like BTC Broadband, have local areas they serve with their own network — but most of those networks don’t cover the entire globe. Upstream providers like Cogent, Lumen, Zayo, and others route traffic beyond local networks, enabling a global online experience.

When a major line gets cut, some traffic — especially to streaming sites hosted in Dallas like Hulu and Amazon Prime — can’t be rerouted. This causes slowdowns or buffering, depending on the websites you’re trying to access. Once the major line is repaired, traffic can sometimes take up to 24 hours to clear.

We’ve invested heavily in local infrastructure redundancy. That means if there’s a local issue — like a fiber cut in Bixby — we can better reroute your data and keep things running smoothly. While no provider can guarantee that outages will never occur, these improvements will help mitigate the frequency and severity of outages.

Upstream providers are continuously working on diversifying their networks, but outage-related routing issues do still occur.

To learn more about how upstream providers factor into your BTC experience, click here.