The Web in Concord: High-Speed Access

Concord High Speed Access to the World Wide Web: Accessing Metro Ethernet, Company Broadband and Gigabit Internet

Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Concord, California companies and their business. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, count on fast and reliable access to The Internet.

In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more dependent on access to the internet.

The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What is the best solution for you? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. You may need Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your organization in Concord, California?

Accessing the internet: Ascertaining Your Company Need

You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Concord and distant locations or offices rely on you?

What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Concord, California

Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The net. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:

• High-speed access to The web provider
• Business Internet service
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet
• GbE or Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS protocol
• Point to point data circuits
• 5 Meg Internet access
• 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• Internet access-50 Meg
• One hundred megabytes- fast access to The Internet circuits
• sip trunking / sip trunks
• Personal, specific and dedicated Internet access
• … and countless others

… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.

Web Surfing and Business Internet Access

For many, if not all, companies in Concord, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your company 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 web simultaneously.

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. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.

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.

Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Concord 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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the net with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?

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 access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.

Dedicated Bandwidth Versus Concord Shared Cable Circuits

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. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?

There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.

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.

Backup With Concord High Speed Company Internet Circuits

Circuits can go down in Concord even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?

Try using redundant circuits.

There are two types of redundancy to consider.

A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.

When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Concord have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from 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. 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.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Business High-Speed Internet access?

While access to The net is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The net. Think about the following situations:

Your office depends on Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for its phone service

You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about the quality of your calls? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will you sound muffled?

Maybe your organization acts as a data center for various other locations

Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. 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 happens in the event of a circuit failure? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process or take new orders? Dispense and receive data? 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 count on. Is an API utilized in your company so that your customers can access and talk to your system? What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Does your business completely rely on the web? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Looks like you are now out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Choosing the Right Concord, California High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Company

You clearly have many options. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. In review:

Your Small Organization and Access to the Internet

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. 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. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your company.

Your Single Location Mid Sized Company Needs Internet Access

You will need higher speed access to The net if you have a medium sized organization in Concord. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.

Internet Access for Mid-Sized Businesses with Several Locations

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Here too, 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. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.

Providers of services that rely on the net for their delivery, big corporate clients and enterprise customers

If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. 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 need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. 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 risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.

Our engineers can help. We will analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.

Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.