The lifeblood of Biloxi, Mississippi companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The web. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly dependent on our access to the net.
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. How can your needs be met? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your company in Biloxi need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, 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. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used to network with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Biloxi and remote places rely on this.
Have you thought about what will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is your success reliant on uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses 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. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in Biloxi need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The best solution may depend upon how many employees you have. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access 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.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Biloxi that have been previously wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. 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.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? 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 law firm hosting data for multiple office sites?
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. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are 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. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast access to The net is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or organization. No one else uses it. 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.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Biloxi, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. You get some protection, but also some 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 providers or circuits. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Biloxi. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Please think about the following scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office is the center of your organization. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your organization is 100% reliant on the internet to properly function. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. You are essentially out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Clearly, there are many choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You have a mid-sized Biloxi company; higher speed Internet access required. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Availability and costs vary. 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.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. 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 goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant 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 company needs. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly 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 can often provide assessments within 48 hours.