Today’s environment demands that companies in Apache Junction, Arizona have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The web.
We are going to become increasingly reliant on access to The web as the months and years progress.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the net is omnipresent. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Will your Apache Junction, Arizona business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Apache Junction and remote sites rely on this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? How much uptime is essential to your business? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The web. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
Workers for most companies in Apache Junction have some need to access the web during the course of their job. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the web may be needed.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Are you performing routine backups? 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.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Apache Junction that are already wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your company headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three sites?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work 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.
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants 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. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? 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.
Circuits can go down in Apache Junction, Arizona 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, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. 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 should look for redundant circuits from providers in Apache Junction, Arizona that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your organization is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire business 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. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are remote offices able to work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate necessary data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your business is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are out of business. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In summary:
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 Internet access circuit may suffice. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. 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 companies with a single office in Apache Junction, need higher speed access to The 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 providers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is crucial. Different providers are desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your company, you will benefit.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to redundant hardware. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
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.