High-Speed Bloomington Access To The Internet

High Speed Internet access in Bloomington: Organization Broadband Internet, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet Access

In today’s world, Bloomington companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their company. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, depend on fast and reliable access to The net.

We will become increasingly dependent on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.

The Internet is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is everywhere. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Does your Bloomington company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point?

Defining Your Business’s Internet access Needs

Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Bloomington that remote places depend upon?

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 organization? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs

Analyzing Assorted High-Speed Internet Solutions in Bloomington, Illinois

High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. 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 company. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:

• High-speed access to the Internet
• Business Internet or commercial Internet
• Cable modems and broadband
• Metro Ethernet experts
• GbE or Gigabit Ethernet
• Multiprotocol label switching, also known as MPLS
• Point to point data circuits
• Internet access circuits-five megabyte
• Internet access circuits-10 Meg
• 50 Meg access to The net circuits
• Internet access circuits- One hundred Meg
• Session Initiation Protocol/ Sip trunk
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and much more

… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.

Surfing the Web: Company Internet Access

Workers for most companies in Bloomington have some need to access the net during the course of their job. Third party applications, company research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the web may be needed.

Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the internet during the same hours.

High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.

Do you perform backups at your company? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.

Does your business use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.

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 usually contained in “lit buildings” in Bloomington, Illinois 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 company.

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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.

Hosted Applications Requiring High-Speed Internet Access

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? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three locations?

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied sites?

For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. It is advisable that high-speed access to The net be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.

Shared Cable Circuits V. Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Bloomington, Illinois

Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?

Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.

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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.

Here, carriers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.

Redundant High Speed Company Internet in Bloomington, Illinois: Why More Circuits?

Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Bloomington, Illinois, circuits do go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.

Redundancy basically comes in two forms.

The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.

In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.

To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Bloomington. 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. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.

Not Having Business Class High Speed-Internet Access Protection May Cost You

The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please think about the following scenarios:

You use VoIP for your business telephone service

If your organization utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. It is possible that during normal organization hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.

Your office or company is the main location for data and functions in that role for multiple locations

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. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. Your circuit goes down, now what will happen? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are remote offices able to work at all? Process or take new orders? Dispense and receive data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Your organization is 100% reliant on the web to properly function. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. Your company is basically done with. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Bloomington Company

You have no shortage of options. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. To recap:

Internet Access and the Small Business

If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Organization with One Location

You have a mid-sized Bloomington, Illinois company; higher speed Internet access required. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.

Mid-Sized Businesses access to The net – Multiple Locations

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely essential to them. Varied providers are optimal. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Here too, 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. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.

What about enterprise clients and large corporate clients? What about clients who provide services that count on the web for delivery of said services?

Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring 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.

Free Internet Demand and Need Analysis

The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. It is essential to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your company with the resources it needs.

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.