Obtaining High-Speed Internet Access in Alameda

Alameda High Speed Access to the World Wide Web: Accessing Metro Ethernet, Company Broadband Internet and Gigabit Internet

Because of today’s environment, companies in Alameda rely on the net. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.

access to The net will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.

The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the best solution for you? Can a cable modem suffice? Do you need Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your Alameda company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?

Defining the Business Need for Internet Access

You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your organization. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is real time data connection with cloud servers vital to your organization? Are you hosting data in Alameda, California? Do remote places rely upon you?

How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Alameda, California

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:

• Fast access to The net is for you!
• Business Internet / Internet for business
• What about broadband cable modems?
• Provider of Metro Ethernet
• Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS service provider
• PPP- or point-to-point protocol
• Internet access circuits-5 Meg
• Ten megabyte Internet access
• High-speed 50-megabyte access to The Internet circuits
• High-speed Internet access circuits-100 megabytes
• sip trunking / sip trunks
• Personal, specific and dedicated Internet access
• … plus others

… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.

Business access to The Internet for Web Surfing

At most businesses including those in Alameda, some or all employees need access to The net. access to The web may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.

Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.

Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.

Are you performing backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.

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? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.

Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Alameda, California in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.

Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the net with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.

Online Applications Need High-Speed access to The net

Does your company host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external places?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow 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.

An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Alameda, California V. Shared Cable Circuits

In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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 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. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?

Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.

Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.

In these scenarios, carriers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.

Redundant High Speed Business Internet Circuits in Alameda

Alameda, California has some carriers 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?

Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.

There are two types of redundancy to consider.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one 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. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.

When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Alameda, California have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. 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.

Not Having Adequate Protection for your High-Speed access to The web: What is the Cost to Your Business?

It is true that access to The Internet costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these situations:

The phone service in your office relies on Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? 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? What will happen to the strength and quality of that call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?

Your organization functions as the primary data center for multiple external locations

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. Whether you have 2 locations, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Is work even possible at your other places? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. 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 rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Your business is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company in Alameda

Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. In summary:

Internet Access for the Small Business Owner

If your organization is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The Internet circuit may suffice. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.

Internet Access-One Location- Medium Sized Business

You have a midsized company in Alameda, California; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.

Mid-Sized Businesses access to The web – Multiple Locations

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They require redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.

Bigger corporations, enterprise companies and providers of services that are delivered using Internet

For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. 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. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

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.

Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly at a reasonable cost.

Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.