The lifeblood of Augusta, Georgia companies doing organization in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
We will become increasingly dependent on access to The net as the months and years progress.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What is the right solution for your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. What is best for your company in Augusta? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Do remote sites count on you hosting the data in Augusta?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your business. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At any company in Augusta some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
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. If you have many employees who need to use the internet 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. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
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.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Augusta, Georgia that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
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. 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 legal practice hosting the data for three places?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
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. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. 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 bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during organization hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Augusta even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. You get some protection, but also some risk.
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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Augusta, Georgia. 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. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. 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.
The cost of dependable access to The Internet pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. 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 your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
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. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, rely on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Is work even possible at your other locations? Can they process transactions or new orders? Dispense and receive data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. 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. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Is the net integral to the proper function of your company? Do you rely on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your organization needs and budgets will drive your decisions. In summary:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The Internet circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You have a midsized company in Augusta; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred 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.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple locations. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. 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. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. 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.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
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. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your organization needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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