Today’s environment demands that companies in Richmond, Georgia have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true regardless how large or small the organization.
We are going to, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The web.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What do you need? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your Richmond, Georgia business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your business? Are you hosting the data in Richmond and distant places or offices rely on you?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? How will the downtime affect your company? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The web. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your company is imperative. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
Most companies in Richmond, Georgia require that some or all of their workers have access to the internet. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. 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.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. 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. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The net may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Also, securing high-speed access to The net using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Is your main organization office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. High-speed access to The Internet is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out 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.
Realistically, while some carriers in Richmond offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. You get some protection, but also some risk.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different providers. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Richmond, Georgia. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Although access to The net comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The net is tremendous. Think about the following situations:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire business enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, rely on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the internet. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now officially out of organization. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To recap:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. 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.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Richmond, Georgia, need higher speed Internet access. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of providers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We are going to formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.