The lifeblood of Auburn, Alabama companies doing company in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the web.
Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? What does your Auburn, Alabama business 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?
Your organization must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? Do remote places rely on you hosting the data in Auburn?
What will happen to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime essential? Before making a purchase, these are several of the questions you need to answer.
Speaking broadly, all companies need 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 service providers use terms like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At any company in Auburn some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the net if they are to properly perform their job duties. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the internet may be needed.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the internet at the same time.
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 routinely backup? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize 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. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed organization Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Auburn that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. 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.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? 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 web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various 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. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. 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. 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?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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 net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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 Auburn, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in 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. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. 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 Auburn, Alabama please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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. 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 locations. 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Consider the following:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What happens to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of organization 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. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. 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 if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their business elsewhere?
Does your organization completely rely on the web? Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. 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? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Clearly, there are many choices. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. In review:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The web circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. 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.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Auburn, need higher speed Internet access. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. 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 organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
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 need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. You want your company to run smoothly. We are going to look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
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. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.