Today’s environment demands that companies in St. Paul, Minnesota have reliable Internet service in order to run their company. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast access to The web.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more dependent on internet access.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What is the best solution for you? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What does your St. Paul organization need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in St. Paul, Minnesota.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential? You must answer these questions before you buy.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For many, if not all, companies in St. Paul, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemWhen they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you performing backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
High-speed organization Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in St. Paul in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external places?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during company hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your organization. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the web, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
Here, providers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
Circuits can go down in St. Paul even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in St. Paul, Minnesota. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
access to The Internet costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider the following:
Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are business that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Will calls be cut-off? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your sites. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 places. What if your circuit fails? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other locations? Process or take new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight rates, 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. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the web. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Your organization is basically done with. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have several choices. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. In review:
If you are a small business, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The net circuit may be sufficient. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
If you have a midsized company in St. Paul, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Different providers are desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The web circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
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. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.