Using NBN Enterprise Ethernet as the Core of a Multi-Cloud Connectivity Strategy

For many Australian organisations, cloud adoption has gone well beyond a single provider. Today’s IT environments span AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and dozens of SaaS platforms. This multi-cloud approach enhances resilience, prevents vendor lock-in, and facilitates the selection of top-tier technology options. Yet despite this maturity, many IT Managers and infrastructure leaders still experience a disconnect between cloud strategy and day-to-day performance.

Applications feel slow. Backups overrun maintenance windows. Latency spikes appear without warning. In most cases, the issue is not the cloud itself. It is the network connecting the business to it.

A cloud's agility is only as good as the fibre beneath it. This is where NBN Enterprise Ethernet plays a critical role. It serves as a key connection point to a multi-cloud setup, providing reliable, equal-speed internet and service quality promises that regular NBN plans can't match. When set up properly, NBN Enterprise Ethernet makes the public cloud work like a smooth part of the local network instead of a faraway resource reached through regular internet.

Technical Foundations: Why Symmetry and CoS Matter for Cloud

Symmetrical Throughput for Bi-Directional Cloud Sync

In the contemporary cloud, workloads are naturally bidirectional. There is an unending exchange of data between the cloud and the local servers. For off-site backups, database replication, DevOps, media, team collaboration, and real-time analytics, steady upload and download performance is paramount.

To support these situations, symmetrical throughput such as 500Mbps or 1Gbps in both ways is required. NBN Enterprise Ethernet intentionally provides this balance. The hidden restrictions caused by mismatched upload and download that annoyingly slow down cloud performance are removed.

On the contrary, a standard link with asymmetric bandwidth greatly limits the upload while giving the download its priority. Such services look fast in comparison with others, but in reality, they create upload bottlenecks which hinder real-time applications such as live data ingestion and video production, affect the efficiency of backups, and cause time delays in replication. Often IT departments compensate for this by restricting apps or scheduling overnight tasks, which leads to a direct impact on the flexibility cloud platforms promise.

The NBN Enterprise Ethernet architecture in a multi-cloud environment is always moving data. Instead of being a remote site that is accessible through a limited uplink, the cloud resources are treated as an extension of the local area network (LAN). Just this one change alone transforms how teams design and control hybrid environments.

Leveraging Class of Service (CoS) to Prioritize Critical Traffic

Without limit, bandwidth soon turns into a struggle for resources. When all applications share the pipe, performance deteriorates during peak periods. Class of Service networking provides the way out of this dilemma.

NBN Enterprise Ethernet offers high CoS options with guaranteed bit rates and prioritised packet management. These guarantees ensure consistent treatment of important traffic, even during challenging times.

For IT Managers this means you can guarantee that ERP systems, VoIP and teamwork platforms, VDI sessions, and cloud-hosted business-critical applications will not be affected by the traffic from software updates, web browsing, or large file transfers. Instead of competing for scarce resources, the applications operate within the established performance benchmarks.

When CoS is absent, packet queues fill up in an unpredictable manner. As latency and jitter increase, the user experience becomes more unpredictable. With NBN Enterprise Ethernet, performance is designed rather than guessed at. This amount of predictability is crucial when cloud platforms are the backbone of core business operations in finance, healthcare, government, and enterprise services.

Integrating the Multi-Cloud Fabric via NBN EE

Direct Cloud Interconnects and Virtual Cross-Connects

A modern cloud connectivity strategy rarely relies on the public internet alone. Australian organisations increasingly connect directly into cloud ecosystems through cloud exchanges such as Megaport or Equinix.

NBN Enterprise Ethernet provides the physical foundation for these architectures. It delivers a stable, high-capacity fibre link from your premises to a data centre or exchange point, where virtual cross-connects can be provisioned to hyperscalers.

By bypassing the public internet, organisations gain predictable latency, improved security, and consistent throughput. Traffic avoids uncontrolled networks and remains within defined, monitored paths.

Connecting to AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute over NBN Enterprise Ethernet allows cloud workloads to behave like privately connected infrastructure. This approach supports hybrid and multi-cloud designs where applications span environments without exposing sensitive data to unnecessary risk.

For infrastructure and network managers, this architecture also simplifies troubleshooting. When issues arise, the path is known and governed by service-level commitments rather than opaque internet routing.

SD-WAN Orchestration over a Business-Grade Underlay

SD-WAN has emerged as the control plane that is preferred for the networking of multiple clouds. It provides centralised policy management, application-aware routing, and dynamic link selection across several links.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of SD-WAN is directly dependent on the quality of its sublayer. The running of sophisticated overlays over the top of unstable, consumer-quality connections restricts the solution's value. Packet loss, jitter, and inconsistent latency are the reasons why SD-WAN has to constantly compensate.

The NBN Enterprise Ethernet is the premium-grade, business-focused underlay that lets SD-WAN work the way it is intended. The incentives sparking the SD-WAN fabric's sturdy basis to evenly distribute the traffic among the departments and the cloud platforms include, among others, reliable latency, equal upload and download rates, and CoS guarantees.

In this situation, the NBN Enterprise Ethernet guarantees performance, while the SD-WAN brings flexibility, durability, and oversight. The two together have formed an excellent SD-WAN underlay strategy that is adaptable to the multiclass and highly demanding character of today's IT infrastructures.

Strategic Resilience and Operational Scalability

Fibre Diversity and Path Redundancy Strategies

Cloud-first does not imply a single route. It’s the responsibility of IT leaders to ensure that resilience is integrated into their cloud strategies, especially when essential operations are running on cloud platforms.

The suggested approach is to have NBN Enterprise Ethernet paired with another connection that is different in location and thus, geographically diverse. The second connection may be a fibre service delivered through a different route or a high-speed 5G service serving as a failover. The aim is to completely remove any failures that are common between the organisation and its cloud providers.

With SD-WAN, these links can be used in either of the two modes: active-active or active-standby. The traffic will be rerouted automatically in case of degradation or outages. The outcome is a system that has higher availability, faster recovery times, and reduced operational risk, all of which are achieved without manual intervention.

Scaling Bandwidth for AI and Big Data Demands

The demand for cloud services is ever-changing. The increase of data volume continues, while network infrastructure has to deal with the emerging workloads, i.e., AI training, machine learning, large-scale analytics, etc., that are putting unprecedented pressure on it.

NBN Enterprise Ethernet has the capability to support the demand in a vast and rapid manner, sometimes even up to 10 Gbps, without the need for new physical construction. Changes in capacity could be executed in no time, which would allow the IT department to react to new projects, seasonal high demand, or even unpredicted growth.

This extra space is of utmost importance for those companies that are creating massive data storage, using AI for scanning and analysis, or even moving performance-sensitive workloads to a cloud environment. The large amounts of data that are being processed have to be transferred quickly in order for them to maintain their value. The company would not be able to compete in the market if it took months for a network upgrade.

The NBN Enterprise Ethernet makes the bandwidth a resource which can easily be configured rather than a constraint that lasts for a long time.

NBN Enterprise Ethernet is not just an internet connection; it can be a powerful part of a cloud connectivity strategy when applied properly. The symmetrical performance of the NBN Enterprise Ethernet allows for real-time bi-directional cloud workflows. With Class of Service guarantees, the most important applications are secured. Direct access to the cloud makes it possible for the public cloud to be treated like a local network.

NBN Enterprise Ethernet along with SD-WAN, fibre diversity, and scalable bandwidth gives the power to the Australian organisations to confidently build multi-cloud environments that are resilient and have the highest performance.

If you feel that your cloud strategy is limited by your network, it would be time to take a closer look at the fibers that support it. The Anticlockwise Team can assist you in the designing and implementing of an NBN Enterprise Ethernet multi-cloud solution that is capable of supporting the current workloads as well as the future growth.