The lifeblood of Appleton, Wisconsin companies doing company in the current environment relies on reliable Internet access. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable access to The net.
We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our Internet access.
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? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your organization in Appleton need one of these: 10 Meg access to The web, a 100 Meg access to The net point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the net? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Appleton, Wisconsin.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? How much uptime is essential to your company? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your company is imperative. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Appleton, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, access to The Internet is required.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you 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 net at the same time, you may do better with more.
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. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you regularly performing 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.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Appleton that are already wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
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. 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.
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. 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 fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even 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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these scenarios, providers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
While certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in Appleton, Wisconsin, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. 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. 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. 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.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Appleton, Wisconsin. 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. 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 to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Please consider these situations:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the center of your organization. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What if your circuit fails? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share essential data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company 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. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Maybe your business 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. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You will need higher speed Internet access if you have a medium sized organization in Appleton. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your organization run as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying 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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.