Because of today’s environment, companies in Eau Claire count on the net. Reliable access to the web is the lifeblood of their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, rely on reliable and fast Internet access.
access to The web will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The web will only grow as time goes on.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. What does your Eau Claire, Wisconsin organization need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Perhaps you, in Eau Claire, are hosting the data and remote sites depend upon this.
Have you thought about what happens to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How much downtime can your business withstand? Is uptime essential? You must answer these questions before you buy.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The net. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Workers for most companies in Eau Claire have some need to access the web during the course of their job. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemWhen employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing routine backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, 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? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Eau Claire, Wisconsin that have been previously wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have 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?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a organization with a single office that needs to surf the web. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The net including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
There are carriers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
Providers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, circuits do go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better 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 want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. 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.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will they be full of static?
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 locations, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their organization elsewhere?
Your company is completely reliant on the internet. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Your business is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To recap:
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 Eau Claire requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. 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. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company run as efficiently as possible.
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 providers 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. 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.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We’ll examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run company.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.