Today’s environment demands that companies in Burien have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The net.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the internet is certainly ubiquitous. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Does your organization in Burien, Washington need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your company really needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Burien, Washington? Do remote places rely upon you?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your company? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is your success reliant on uptime? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
At any company in Burien some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or communicate with clients.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 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, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you routinely backup? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
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. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
You may consider high-speed organization Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The net may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
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, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the net with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a organization with a single office that needs to surf the web. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. 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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the web, 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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Burien, Washington, circuits do go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Burien, Washington. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. 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. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
While access to The net is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable Internet access. Consider the following:
Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During company hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What will happen to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of company does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your places whether you have two or two thousand. What if your circuit fails? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. 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. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
What if your business could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your business relies on it completely. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Your business is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:
If you are a small business, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. 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. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
Mid-sized businesses in Burien should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Multiple carriers would be great. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The web circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous 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. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers can help. We are going to analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to 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.
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