Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Coral Gables companies and their company. The organization functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends on fast and reliable access to The Internet.
access to The web will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
The web has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? You may need Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Coral Gables?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is real time data connection with cloud servers essential to your business? Are you hosting data in Coral Gables? Do remote sites rely upon you?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime essential? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. When choosing the right broadband for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Coral Gables, access to The net is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Coral Gables that have already been wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If the internet connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
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. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While fast access to The Internet is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. 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. 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.
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. In your office out to the web you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
Circuits can go down in Coral Gables, Florida even though certain carriers 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.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Coral Gables please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
Even though access to The Internet comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Consider the following:
Is your business on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be cut-off? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. Whether you have 2 locations, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate essential files and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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 speak with you to collect information and data. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your business is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are essentially out of company. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. In summary:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The web circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They 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.
You have a mid-sized Coral Gables company; higher speed Internet access required. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Availability and costs vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We are going to 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.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.