Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of East Lansing, Michigan companies and their organization. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The net. This is true regardless how large or small the business.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is certainly ubiquitous. How can your needs be met? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. What does your East Lansing company need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Perhaps the internet 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 web? Are you hosting the data in East Lansing, Michigan and distant sites or offices rely on you?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime essential? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in East Lansing need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed company access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in East Lansing that are already wired by a carrier. 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. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Consider whether your company hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Is your main organization office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three sites?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While fast access to The Internet is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous 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. 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. 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 companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. 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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Circuits can go down in East Lansing 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?
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. 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. 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. 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.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in East Lansing that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. 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.
Even though access to The net comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Please consider these situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your organization. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Is work even possible at your other sites? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and speak with your system? What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Your organization is completely dependent on the web. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your business is basically done with. While most call centers that are reputable use 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? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You have several different options to pick from. Your company needs and budgets will drive your decisions. In summary:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The Internet circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. 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 East Lansing, Michigan, need higher speed Internet access. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. This may be attainable without doubling 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Your organization can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We are going to create something cost effective that gives you the resources your business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.