Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Scranton, Pennsylvania companies and their business. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends upon fast and reliable Internet access.
We are going to become increasingly dependent on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Does your organization in Scranton need one of these: 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg access to The Internet point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your business, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Scranton that remote locations rely upon?
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
Workers for most companies in Scranton, Pennsylvania have some need to access the web during the course of their job. access to The net may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you perform backups at your company? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Organization high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Scranton, Pennsylvania that are already wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. Also, securing high-speed access to The Internet using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct organization. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet 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 net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
There are carriers who offer dedicated and even 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 company. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
Scranton, Pennsylvania has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 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.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your business. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share information? Do you know what your organization needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate 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 other systems can’t connect to your office servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your organization is completely reliant on the internet. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are out of business. 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. Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a wrap-up:
If you are a small business, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The Internet circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Mid-sized businesses in Scranton, Pennsylvania should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. 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 instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
If your business has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Different carriers are desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from 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.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. You want your business to run smoothly. We will look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.