These days, companies in Winston-Salem rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true regardless of how large or small the company.
Our reliance on access to the internet will become greater in the near and distant future.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the internet is everywhere you look. How can your needs be met? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that remote places rely upon?
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your company? Is uptime essential? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, some or all employees need Internet access. access to The web may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you perform backups at your company? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The web, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Your business may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during company hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Winston-Salem, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Please consider these situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Is work even possible at your other places? Process new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your organization is entirely Internet based. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. To recap:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You have a midsized company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.