These days, companies in Aurora depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their business. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast Internet access.
access to The Internet will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Will your Aurora, Illinois company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your business? Perhaps you, in Aurora, are hosting the data and remote locations depend upon this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your company? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is your success reliant on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
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. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Most companies in Aurora, Illinois require that some or all of their workers have access to the net. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
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 you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.
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.
Are you performing backups? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The Internet, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Aurora that have been previously 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.
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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The web in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? 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? Do you host data for three or more external places?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. 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.
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While fast access to The web is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
Realistically, while some carriers in Aurora offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Try using 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. 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. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct carriers. 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. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Aurora, Illinois. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal business hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Is work even possible at your other places? Can they take or process any orders at all? Dispense and receive data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. 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 they are unable to connect to your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the internet. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Your organization is basically done with. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. As a wrap-up:
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 Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. 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. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Aurora, Illinois, need higher speed access to The net. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. 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. Availability and costs vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to redundant hardware. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. 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.
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. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
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. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.