Because of today’s environment, companies in Buffalo Grove, Illinois rely on the web. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their business. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our Internet access.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? Does your Buffalo Grove, Illinois organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Buffalo Grove, Illinois and distant sites or offices rely on you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your company? Does your company require uptime? Before making a purchase, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your company is imperative. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. access to The Internet may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your organization if you only have a few people working for you. If you have many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you backup information? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Does your business use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The Internet, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. These can usually be found in Buffalo Grove, Illinois in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your organization host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during company hours? 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. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Realistically, while some providers in Buffalo Grove, Illinois offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Buffalo Grove, Illinois that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central company spaces or data centers. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Think about the following situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What about the quality of your calls? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. All of your locations, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Process new orders? Share information? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your business. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all count on. 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 happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
What if your business could not function at all without the net? Maybe your business depends on it completely. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Looks like you are now out of company. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You have no shortage of options. Your business needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. In summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The web circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You have a midsized company in Buffalo Grove, Illinois; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. They require redundant circuits. 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. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. You want your business to run smoothly. We are going to look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.