In today’s environment, companies in Carlsbad rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The Internet.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly dependent on our access to the net.
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? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Your Carlsbad company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Carlsbad and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How much downtime can your organization withstand? How much uptime is essential to your business? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. 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?
For most companies in Carlsbad, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the web during the same hours.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Carlsbad, California. Providers have already wired these buildings. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. Also, securing high-speed access to The net using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?
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 internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various locations?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even 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.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.
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 Carlsbad, California, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. 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. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in 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. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Carlsbad. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. 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.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The net. Consider the following:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What about the quality of your calls? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail company operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your sites whether you have two or two thousand. What happens if your circuit crashes? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential information with anyone? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. You may operate a service like this: other systems talk to yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Maybe your company depends entirely on the web. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Basically, you are out of organization. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Carlsbad requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They require redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. 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 Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.
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. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without 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 right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We’ll then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.
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 less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.