The lifeblood of Carson City ‐ , Nevada companies doing organization in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. All companies count on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true regardless of how large or small the business.
We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our access to The net.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may be required. What is best for your business in Carson City ‐ ? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Carson City ‐ , Nevada that remote sites depend upon?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For most companies in Carson City ‐ , Nevada, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. 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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
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? 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.
High-speed organization Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Carson City ‐ that have been previously wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?
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 company. If the internet connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. 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 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. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. 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. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the internet can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
In these scenarios, carriers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
Circuits can go down in Carson City ‐ , Nevada even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. 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. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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 providers with different physical geographic pathways in Carson City ‐ . Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central 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.
The cost of dependable access to The web pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During company hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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 places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a 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 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 if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Maybe your company depends entirely on the net. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are essentially out of business. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not vital to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. 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 Carson City ‐ ; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. 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 providers to provide and service different circuits. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your organization running smoothly and efficiently.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. 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.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop 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 business.
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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.