Reliable access to The web is the lifeblood of Danbury 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 Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly dependent on our access to the internet.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. What is the right solution to meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may be required. What does your Danbury, Connecticut company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your organization? Are you hosting the data in Danbury and distant sites or offices rely on you?
What happens to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At most businesses including those in Danbury, some or all employees need access to The Internet. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 more than that, you may need 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. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
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? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
You may consider high-speed business access to The net if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Danbury that have been previously wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net 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? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. 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, those people cannot get their work done. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied places?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet 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. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. 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. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your organization day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.
In these scenarios, providers 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 Danbury, Connecticut even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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 there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. 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 Danbury, Connecticut have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. 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 sites. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Although access to The Internet comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The web is tremendous. Consider these scenarios:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about phone call quality? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of organization does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process or take new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your company 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 organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a high-level summary:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The Internet circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You have a midsized company in Danbury; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet 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 should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
If your company has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The web circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your business.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Your company faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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