These days, companies in Deerfield Beach rely on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The net.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the internet.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What can best meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. Does your organization in Deerfield Beach need one of these: 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Deerfield Beach, Florida that remote locations rely upon?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is your success reliant on uptime? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. 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 service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… 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.
At any company in Deerfield Beach, Florida 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 to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you regularly performing 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.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Providers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during company hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these scenarios, carriers 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 Deerfield Beach 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?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. 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 offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Deerfield Beach. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. 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.
It is true that access to The net costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Think about the following situations:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your company is 100% reliant on the web to properly function. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Basically, you are done. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You have no shortage of options. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
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 access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. 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. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Deerfield Beach, Florida, need higher speed access to The web. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. 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.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
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