Because of today’s environment, companies in Clarke, Georgia rely on the web. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their business. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast access to The web.
In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly reliant on our access to the web.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Clarke company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point but which one is best?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Perhaps you, in Clarke, Georgia, are hosting the data and remote sites rely on this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? Before buying, these are several of the questions that you must answer.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At any company in Clarke, Georgia some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. 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 many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you routinely backup? 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? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to 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 business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Clarke, Georgia that have been previously wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central business office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. 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 less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set 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. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside 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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the web, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Clarke even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. 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. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Clarke, Georgia please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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. 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 Internet access. Contemplate these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Can they process transactions or new orders? Circulate necessary data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. 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. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your business is entirely Internet based. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are done. Is redundancy enough? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To summarize:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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.
Mid-sized businesses in Clarke should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
If your business has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. 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 right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
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. 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 organization. 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 analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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