In today’s environment, companies in Bolingbrook depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, rely on reliable and fast access to The web.
access to The Internet will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The Internet will only grow as time goes on.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point: what is right for your business in Bolingbrook, Illinois?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the net? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Bolingbrook and distant sites or offices rely on you?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? How will the downtime affect your business? Is uptime required? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The net. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Most companies in Bolingbrook require that some or all of their workers have access to the net. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. If your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing routine 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.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed business access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Bolingbrook. Providers have already wired these buildings. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
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. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon 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 company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. It is advisable that high-speed access to The web be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. 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. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Bolingbrook, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. 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 that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or 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 providers. 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. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Bolingbrook please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central locations. 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. Consider the following:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your locations, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to speak with you to collect information and data. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your business? Do you rely on it entirely? Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Looks like you are now out of organization. Is redundancy enough? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. To recap:
If your company 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 Internet 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. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid-sized businesses in Bolingbrook should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.