The Web in Cape Girardeau: High-Speed Access

Cape Girardeau, Missouri High Speed access to The Net: Company Broadband Internet, Metro Ethernet Access and Gigabit Internet

In today’s world, Cape Girardeau, Missouri companies need dependable access to The Internet. It is the lifeblood of their organization. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, depend on fast and reliable Internet access.

Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.

Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What do you need? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. Your Cape Girardeau 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?

Accessing the net: Ascertaining Your Organization Need

The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your business? Are you hosting data in Cape Girardeau, Missouri? Do remote sites rely upon you?

What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs

Looking at Different High Speed Internet Solutions: Cape Girardeau

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. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:

• Internet access at high-speeds
• Internet for companies or Internet corporations
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metro Ethernet
• Gigabit Internet services
• Multiprotocol label switching, also known as MPLS
• Services related to point-to-point circuits
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• 10 megabyte Internet access
• Internet access- 50 megabytes
• One hundred Meg Internet access circuits provided
• Sip trunking specialists
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and then some

… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?

Surfing the Web: Organization Internet Access

Companies in Cape Girardeau, Missouri need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.

The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. 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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.

Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.

Do you backup information? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.

Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

Depending on your location, high-speed company Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Cape Girardeau, Missouri 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.

Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net in thirty days or less, depending on availability.

Web Applications Require Fast Internet Access

Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Maybe your company 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? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.

The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.

Shared Cable Network in Cape Girardeau, Missouri V. Dedicated Bandwidth: Which Should You Choose?

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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during organization hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?

You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.

Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.

Providers 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.

High Speed Organization Internet Circuits in Cape Girardeau, Missouri: How About Redundancy?

Circuits can go down in Cape Girardeau, Missouri even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.

There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.

A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.

You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. 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 carriers in Cape Girardeau, Missouri that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.

What Will Not Having Enough Protection for Your Organization Class High Speed Internet Cost You?

Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The net is greater. Contemplate these scenarios:

Your company telephone utilizes voice-over Internet Protocol, or VoIP as it is commonly known

The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls dropped? Will the calls be choppy?

Is your business the central data location for multiple offices?

Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail business operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Is work even possible at your other locations? What about new orders? Share information? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Do you operate a service where other systems talk to 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 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 call center uses VoIP

What if your business could not function at all without the net? Maybe your business relies on it completely. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are essentially out of company. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.

Considering the Best Cape Girardeau High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company

You clearly have several choices. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. Essentially:

If You Have a Small Organization That Needs Internet Access

You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Organization with One Location

You have a mid-sized Cape Girardeau company; higher speed access to The web required. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.

Mid-Sized Company with More than One Location: Access to the Internet

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are essential. Varied providers are optimal. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your business.

What about enterprise clients and large corporate clients? What about clients who provide services that count on the internet for delivery of said services?

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. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. 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. 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.

You May Receive an Internet Need and Internet Demand Analysis for Free

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 business needs. 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 analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your company with the resources it needs.

Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.