High-Speed Access to The Internet in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Access to High Speed Internet in Ann Arbor, Michigan: Metro Ethernet Access, Company Broadband and Gigabit Internet

In today’s world, Ann Arbor, Michigan companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their business. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.

Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.

From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point: what is right for your business in Ann Arbor, Michigan?

Accessing the web: Ascertaining Your Organization Need

Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting data in Ann Arbor, Michigan? Do remote places rely upon you?

How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? How will the downtime affect your business? Is your success reliant on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.

Looking at Different High Speed Internet Solutions: Ann Arbor, Michigan

High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. Many providers toss out terms such as:

• High-speed Internet access
• Business Internet / Internet for business
• What about broadband cable modems?
• Metro Ethernet service provider
• Gigabit Internet services
• MPLS network
• point-to-point circuits
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• We provide 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• 50 Meg access to The net circuits
• Internet access circuits- One hundred megabytes
• Leading SIP trunk authority
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and so many more

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

Business Internet access for Website Surfing

Workers for most companies in Ann Arbor have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up business information speak with third parties.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 more than that, you may need more.

High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.

Do you backup information? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.

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? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.

Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Ann Arbor, Michigan that have already been wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The web may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? 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? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?

Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my 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. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.

Cable Circuit Sharing in Ann Arbor Versus Dedicated Bandwidth: What is Right For You?

Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. 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. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

Some providers offer customers 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.

With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.

In these cases, the providers 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.

Redundant High Speed Company Internet Circuits in Ann Arbor

Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Ann Arbor, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?

Try using redundant circuits.

There are two types of redundancy to consider.

With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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 Ann Arbor, Michigan have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. 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. 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 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 is the Cost of Not Having Adequate Protection for Your Company Class High-Speed access to The Internet?

While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The net. Contemplate these situations:

Your company is dependent on VoIP for phone service

Is your business on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about phone call quality? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.

Your office is the main data point for various other offices

Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. 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. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?

You have a large call center that is completely dependent on voice over Internet protocol

Maybe your organization depends entirely on the web. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. They are also unable to answer calls. Looks like you are now out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Picking the Right High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Company in Ann Arbor

Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. Essentially:

Your Small Company and Access to the Internet

If you are a small business, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg Internet access circuit may be sufficient. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your business.

Your Single Location Mid Sized Company Needs Internet Access

You have a midsized company in Ann Arbor, Michigan; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.

Mid-Sized Businesses Internet access – Multiple Locations

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.

Clients who provide services delivered via Internet, large corporate and enterprise clientele

Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your organization needs. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.

We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your company with the resources it needs.

Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.