Today’s environment demands that companies in Denton have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The net.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is everywhere. What is the right solution to meet your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Denton, Texas business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the web? Do remote sites rely on you hosting the data in Denton?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your business afford the downtime? How much uptime is essential to your company? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The web. An analysis of the costs and benefits should be done prior to choosing the broadband internet that is correct for your company. You will hear providers use terms like:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
At any company in Denton some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information communicate with third parties.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. 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.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Are you performing routine 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to 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 access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Denton, Texas that have already been wired by a carrier. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
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, obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your organization host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your company, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different locations?
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. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The web including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. 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.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
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
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Denton, circuits do go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
The answer is redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one 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. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. 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 fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Denton. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please think about the following scenarios:
If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of company 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. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your sites whether you have two or two thousand. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Are your other offices able to do any work? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share information? 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 talk to you to collect information and data. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Does your company completely rely on the net? What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of organization. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
You have several different options to pick from. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. As a wrap-up:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single access to The web circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
If you have a midsized company in Denton, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple locations. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. Having several providers would afford extra protection. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. 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.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We are going to 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 company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please click here if you wish to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Alternatively, call our office to schedule an assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.