Because of today’s environment, companies in Apple Valley, Minnesota rely on the internet. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their company. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The net.
We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The net.
The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the net is everywhere. How can your needs be met? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? Will your Apple Valley, Minnesota organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your business? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Apple Valley.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your company? How will the downtime affect your organization? Is your success reliant on uptime? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. 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 business. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in Apple Valley need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Are you performing routine backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Apple Valley, Minnesota that have been previously wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Do you have your own company servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Maybe your business requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
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. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various locations?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The net is important. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your business. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the web, 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 Apple Valley, Minnesota even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. 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. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. You get some protection, but also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 places. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider the following:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless 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? Will you lose calls? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are your other offices able to do any work? Can they process transactions or new orders? Circulate necessary data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Does your business completely rely on the net? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Your organization is basically done with. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your organization needs and budgets will drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The Internet 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. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
If you have a midsized company in Apple Valley, you will need higher-speed access to The web. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. To repeat, availability and prices vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. 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 correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers can help. We are going to analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.