Obtaining High-Speed Access To The Web in Albany

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

Because of today’s environment, companies in Albany, New York rely on the web. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their company. The business 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.

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

The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is everywhere. How can your needs be met? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. What does your Albany, New York company need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?

Internet Access: Defining the Company Need

Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Do remote places rely on you hosting the data in Albany?

What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

High-Speed Internet Solutions in Albany, New York: Evaluating Differences

In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The web. 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. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:

• High-speed access to The net provider
• Business Internet service provider
• We provide broadband cable modems
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet provider
• Gigabit Ethernet services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS protocol
• Point to point data circuits
• Five megabyte Internet access
• Internet access circuits-10 Meg
• We have fifty-megabyte access to The net circuits
• We provide 100-megabyte Internet access circuits
• Sip trunking providers
• Personal, specific and dedicated Internet access
• … and more

… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.

Business access to The Internet for Surfing the Worldwide Web

At most businesses including those in Albany, some or all employees need access to The web. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.

High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.

Does your company regularly conduct backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.

Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Albany, New York in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.

The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.

Online Applications Need High-Speed access to The web

Does your organization 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 company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?

Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?

If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.

Shared Cable Network in Albany V. Dedicated Bandwidth: Which Should You Choose?

There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?

Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. In this case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.

As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.

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.

Redundant High Speed Business Internet in Albany: Why More Circuits?

Circuits can go down in Albany, New York even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?

The answer is redundant circuits.

There are two types of redundancy to consider.

The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.

Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and 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.

If you want to maximize redundancy in Albany please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.

Not Having Business Class High Speed-Internet Access Protection May Cost You

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 consider these situations:

Your business relies on VoIP for its telephone service

Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? 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 the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will the calls be choppy?

Multiple places use your company as the central data point

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 locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, rely on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your organization 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. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

You are call center dependent on VoIP

Is the web integral to the proper function of your business? Do you depend on it entirely? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. They are also unable to answer calls. Basically, you are done. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?

In Albany: Selecting the Proper High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Company

You clearly have many options. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a wrap-up:

Small Company Internet Access

Sometimes redundancy is not vital to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single access to The web circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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.

Mid-Sized Company access to The Internet: One Location

Mid-sized businesses in Albany should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.

Midsized Businesses with Multiple Places: Internet Access

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here too, 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.

Providers of services that rely on the internet for their delivery, big corporate clients and enterprise customers

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 need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.

You May Receive an Internet Need and Internet Demand Analysis for Free

Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. It is vital to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We’ll examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.

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.