In today’s environment, companies in Dublin depend on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is ubiquitous. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? What does your Dublin business need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the net? You may be hosting the data in Dublin, California and remote sites rely on this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Does your business require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At any company in Dublin, California some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information communicate with third parties.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. 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 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need 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.
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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed organization access to The Internet, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. 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 internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Dublin, circuits do go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Dublin, California that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central business spaces or data centers. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The net is greater. Think about the following situations:
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 the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What about the quality of your calls? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. 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 happens if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Is work even possible at your other locations? Can they process transactions or 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. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Is the net integral to the proper function of your business? Do you depend on it entirely? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are essentially out of business. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. 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 organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Dublin, California requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely important to them. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here too, 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 fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.