In today’s environment, companies in Brownsville, Texas count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, count on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What is the right solution for your requirements? Will a cable modem be adequate? Do you need Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. Does your Brownsville, Texas business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your business, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? Do remote locations rely on you hosting the data in Brownsville, Texas?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before making a purchase, these are several of the questions that you must answer.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. You will hear providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Workers for most companies in Brownsville, Texas have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information communicate with third parties.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 you have 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. 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? 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.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Brownsville that have been previously 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.
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. Also, securing high-speed access to The web using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Consider whether your company hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
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 business. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work 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 sites?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. High-speed access to The Internet is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. 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 differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during business hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your organization. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the web you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Brownsville, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you 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. 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Brownsville, Texas please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. 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.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? 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. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What will happen to your phone calls? What about the quality of your calls? Will calls be cut-off? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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 offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Can they process transactions or 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. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. 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. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of business. 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? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In review:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The net 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 change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Brownsville, Texas, need higher speed access to The web. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of providers and services for your business, you will benefit.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. 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 organization. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers can help. We will analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run company.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.