These days, companies in Danville rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What is the right solution for your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Does your business in Danville, Virginia need one of these: 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 business really needs. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the net? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Danville, Virginia.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? Can your business afford the downtime? Is uptime essential? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your business need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Danville, Virginia, some or all employees need access to The net. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use 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 regularly performing backups? 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.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Danville, Virginia that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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. 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.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied places?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a organization with a single office that needs to surf the web. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct 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. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Some providers offer customers dedicated 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 business. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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 Danville even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Danville, Virginia. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different 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.
The cost of dependable access to The web pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please think about the following scenarios:
Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Are calls dropped? Will they be full of static?
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. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your locations whether you have two or two thousand. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software organization is running. 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 happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
What if your company could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your organization depends upon it completely. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? No calls could be answered either. You are essentially out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. To summarize:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Danville, need higher speed Internet access. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers would be great. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your organization running smoothly and efficiently.
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 carriers as well as redundant hardware. 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 risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. It is vital to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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