Reliable access to The web is the lifeblood of Athens companies and their business. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, depend on fast and reliable access to The web.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more dependent on internet access.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the net is everywhere. What is the best fix to meet your requirements? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Will your Athens, Georgia business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your company? You may be hosting the data in Athens and remote locations rely on this.
Have you thought about what happens to your organization if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Will your company suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Athens, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
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, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Are you performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? 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.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Athens. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. 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.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various sites?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. 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. 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. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Some providers offer customers dedicated 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. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
In these scenarios, carriers 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Athens, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Athens. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from 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.
It is true that access to The net costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Please think about the following scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 locations. What if your circuit fails? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? 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 organization is running. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your company is entirely Internet based. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are now officially out of company. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. 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.
You have a mid-sized Athens, Georgia company; higher speed access to The Internet required. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Companies with different places, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The net circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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.