Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Addison, Illinois companies and their business. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
We will become increasingly dependent on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution for your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? Does your Addison, Illinois company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your organization must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Addison, Illinois.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your company afford the downtime? Is your success reliant on uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Deciding on the right broadband internet is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Addison, Illinois, some or all employees need access to The Internet. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Do you routinely backup? 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.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Company high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Addison. Providers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
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 business. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. 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.
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. High-speed Internet access 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 likely not provide the necessary support.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your organization. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
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 business out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Addison, Illinois even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. 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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. 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.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Addison, Illinois. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. 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.
Although access to The net comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Consider 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 accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will you sound muffled?
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. All of your sites, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Are remote offices able to work at all? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Disseminate needed information and data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their organization elsewhere?
Does your company completely rely on the net? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of business. 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 carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have several choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your organization needs and your budget. To recap:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The net circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Addison, Illinois requires that you have 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. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. 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 Internet access circuit providers. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
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. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous 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 experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We’ll then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.