The lifeblood of Chesterfield companies doing organization in the current environment depends on reliable access to The net. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We’ll become increasingly dependent on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is certainly ubiquitous. How can your needs be met? Will a cable modem be adequate? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Does your Chesterfield, Missouri company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the internet? You may be hosting the data in Chesterfield and remote sites rely on this.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your company withstand? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For most companies in Chesterfield, Missouri, 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 web is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have 50 employees who are using the net simultaneously, you may need more.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you performing backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed company access to The Internet like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Chesterfield. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Consider whether your company hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? 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 carriers in Chesterfield, Missouri, circuits do go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. 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. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Chesterfield, Missouri. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
While access to The Internet is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable Internet access. 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? What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will they be full of static?
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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your locations. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 locations. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
Your company is 100% reliant on the internet to properly function. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Basically, you are out of company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To recap:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The Internet circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. 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. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Chesterfield, Missouri requires that you have higher-speed access to the net. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundancy is crucial. Different carriers are desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. We’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
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. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.