The lifeblood of Bellevue, Nebraska companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The web. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, count on fast and reliable Internet access.
We will become increasingly reliant on access to The web as the months and years progress.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What can best meet your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Do you need Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. What is best for your company in Bellevue, Nebraska? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is it used to network with cloud servers? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Bellevue.
What happens to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the web. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Workers for most companies in Bellevue have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or talk to clients.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the web during the same hours.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemWhen employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The net, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. In fact, obtaining high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
In these cases, the providers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Realistically, while some providers in Bellevue, Nebraska offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Try using redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, 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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Bellevue, Nebraska. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
Even though Internet access comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Think about the following situations:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. 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 your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your organization. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, depend on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. Your circuit goes down, now what will happen? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other sites? Process new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Do you operate a service where other systems speak with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Does your business completely rely on the internet? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are now, essentially, out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To summarize:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The net circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. 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 company.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Bellevue, Nebraska requires that you have higher-speed access to the net. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Varied providers are optimal. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. 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. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your organization needs. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.