These days, companies in Baytown depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small organization or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends upon fast and reliable Internet access.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What is the best solution for you? Will a cable modem be adequate? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet? What is best for your business in Baytown, Texas? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Why will you need the internet? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Baytown and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime required? Before buying, these are some of the questions you need to answer.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… 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.
At most businesses including those in Baytown, Texas, some or all employees need Internet access. The net is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information speak with third parties.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. 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.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Does your organization regularly conduct 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. These can usually be found in Baytown in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail business with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your company, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. High-speed access to The web is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
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. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or business. No one else uses it. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the internet.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Baytown, Texas, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct carriers. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Baytown. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of organization 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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your locations. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 places. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are your other offices able to do any work? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Do you operate a service where other systems speak with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. To summarize:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The net circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
If you have a midsized company in Baytown, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
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. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.