In today’s environment, companies in Attleboro, Massachusetts depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the web.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. How can your needs be met? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What does your Attleboro organization need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? You may be hosting the data in Attleboro, Massachusetts and remote sites rely on this.
Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is your success dependent on uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. You will hear providers use terms like:
… focus on what matters: what does your business need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Companies in Attleboro need access to the net 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 to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The net is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
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, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you backup information? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Attleboro. Carriers have already wired these buildings. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. 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? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The web including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
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. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during company hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
Here, carriers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
Circuits can go down in Attleboro even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Attleboro, Massachusetts please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. 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.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your business is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of company 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 offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are remote offices able to work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Disseminate needed information and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your organization is 100% reliant on the net to properly function. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Looks like you are now out of business. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You have several different options to pick from. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To summarize:
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. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You have a mid-sized Attleboro company; higher speed Internet access required. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
If your business has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Different providers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. Your organization can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
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. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers can help. We’ll analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.