Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota companies and their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. What do you need? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? What does your Brooklyn Park organization need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The net point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota?
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 business? Is your success dependent on uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While many 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 Brooklyn Park require that some or all of their workers have access to the internet. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or talk to clients.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If your company 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 access to The web if your employees work primarily on 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.
Are you performing routine backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota that have already been wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Does your company host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? 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 organization. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular 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? Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
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. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Circuits can go down in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. 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. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Brooklyn Park. 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 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. 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 of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your 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 about the quality of your calls? Are calls lost or 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. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. You are essentially out of company. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your company needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To summarize:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You have a mid-sized Brooklyn Park, Minnesota company; higher speed access to The Internet required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. 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.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. 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. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. 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. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. 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 can help. We’ll analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.