In today’s environment, companies in Odessa, Texas rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast Internet access.
Internet access will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The web will only grow as time goes on.
Our uses of the internet reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What is the best solution for you? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Will your Odessa, Texas organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? Are you hosting the data in Odessa, Texas that remote sites rely upon?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Does your business require uptime? Before buying, these are some of the questions that you need to answer.
Speaking broadly, 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. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
Workers for most companies in Odessa have some need to access the web during the course of their job. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? 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.
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. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Odessa in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
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 web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
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. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?
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 sufficient in this situation. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The Internet including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. 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. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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.
Circuits can go down in Odessa even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. 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.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Odessa, Texas. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical 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. Please think about the following 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? 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 they use more bandwidth, there is less for available for your requirements. What happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your sites, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens 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? Can they take or process any orders at all? Circulate essential files and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Do you operate a service where other systems talk to yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Maybe your business depends entirely on the internet. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. You are now officially out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You have no shortage of options. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. To recap:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Odessa, need higher speed access to The net. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. 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.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. 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 best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
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. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We’ll 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 company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please click here if you wish to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Alternatively, call our office to schedule an assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.