Today’s environment demands that companies in Eagan have reliable Internet service in order to run their company. The organization functions of every company, whether it is a small organization or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, relies on fast and reliable access to The Internet.
access to The net will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is everywhere. What solution bet fits 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 Eagan, Minnesota organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Eagan and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Workers for most companies in Eagan have some need to access the web during the course of their job. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or speak with clients.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing routine backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
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 a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
High-speed business Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Eagan, Minnesota that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its 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 corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail business with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external sites?
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 net 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?
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come 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. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use 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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Eagan, circuits do go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with 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. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Eagan, Minnesota. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
The cost of dependable access to The net pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please consider these situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. 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 your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of business 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 sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Process or take new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and talk to your system? What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
What if your business could not function at all without the net? Maybe your company relies on it completely. 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. Your business is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. As a high-level summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized organization in Eagan, Minnesota. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. They need redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. As always, 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. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet 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 do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.