In today’s environment, companies in Bend, Oregon count on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their business. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The web.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the internet.
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 internet is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Does your organization in Bend need one of these: 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Prior to selecting a service, your business must figure out its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Do remote sites depend on you hosting the data in Bend, Oregon?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? Can your company afford the downtime? Is uptime essential? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your company is imperative. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For most companies in Bend, Oregon, some or all of the employees need access to the web. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up business information talk to third parties.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your business if you only have a few people working for you. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The Internet if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Bend, Oregon in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Is your main organization office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct company. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various sites?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. It is advisable that high-speed access to The net be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during organization hours. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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 web.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
While certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in Bend, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. 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.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Bend. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. 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.
access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Think about the following situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What will happen to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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. Whether you have 2 locations, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Are your other offices able to do any work? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all count on. 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 you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is entirely Internet based. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of business. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To summarize:
If your business is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The web circuit may suffice. 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. 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.
You have a mid-sized Bend company; higher speed access to The Internet required. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your organization run as efficiently as possible.
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. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your organization. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.