In today’s environment, companies in Bradenton, Florida depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, count on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our dependence on access to The web will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is everywhere. What is the best solution for you? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Metro Ethernet? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Your Bradenton, Florida organization probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your organization. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Bradenton.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your business suffer from the lull? Does your organization require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Bradenton, Florida, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Do you backup information? 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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed company access to The Internet like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Does your company 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? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse 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. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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 Bradenton, Florida offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you 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. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. You get some protection, but also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Bradenton, Florida. 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. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will they be full of static?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Does your company completely rely on the net? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Basically, you are out of organization. Is redundancy enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have many options. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. As a high-level summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The Internet circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You will need higher speed access to The Internet if you have a medium sized company in Bradenton, Florida. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely essential to them. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
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. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. 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.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We’ll 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 complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.