High-Speed Altoona Access To The Internet

Altoona, Pennsylvania High Speed Access to the World Wide Web: Accessing Metro Ethernet, Business Broadband and Gigabit Internet

Because of today’s environment, companies in Altoona count on the internet. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.

In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the web.

From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point: what is right for your business in Altoona, Pennsylvania?

How to Define your Company Need for Internet Access

The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Altoona?

What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your business withstand? Is your success reliant on uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Altoona, Pennsylvania

High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:

• Fastest Internet access
• Corporate Internet
• Cable modems and broadband
• Metro Ethernet
• Gigabit Internet services
• Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)
• point-to-point circuits
• five Meg access to The Internet circuits
• 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• Internet access-50 Meg
• We provide 100-megabyte access to The web circuits
• sip trunking / sip trunks
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … plus others

… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?

Business access to The web for Website Surfing

For most companies in Altoona, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.

Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.

Are you regularly performing 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.

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 a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced 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 business access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Also, securing high-speed access to The net using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.

High-Speed Internet access Required for Hosting Applications

Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? 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 places?

Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from 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. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While fast access to The web is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Altoona, Pennsylvania V. Shared Cable Circuits

In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.

You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.

Redundant High Speed Business Internet Circuits in Altoona

You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Altoona, Pennsylvania, problems arise and circuits can fail. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?

Redundant circuits.

We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.

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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. You get some protection, but also some risk.

You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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.

You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Altoona. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. 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 sites. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.

What Will Not Having Enough Protection for Your Organization Class High Speed Internet Cost You?

access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Think about the following situations:

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

The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office 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? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?

Is your organization the central data location for multiple offices?

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. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Share essential data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems talk to yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

Your call center uses VoIP

Is the net integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

Select the Altoona High-Speed Business Access Circuits Best Suited for Your Company

You have several different options to pick from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. Essentially:

Small Company Internet Access

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Organization with One Location

Mid-sized businesses in Altoona should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does 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.

Internet Access and Your Mid-Sized Business: What You Needs

Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The net circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.

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

If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.

Free Internet Demand and Need Analysis

There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.

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. You want your organization 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.

You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.