These days, companies in Edinburg, Texas rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable access to The net.
access to The net will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The net will only grow as time goes on.
The Internet is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is everywhere. What is the best solution for you? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point: what is right for your organization in Edinburg, Texas?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is it used to network with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Edinburg and remote sites rely on this.
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Edinburg, Texas, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the internet may be needed.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your business if you only have a few people working for you. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you backup information? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on your location, high-speed organization Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Edinburg, Texas that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. 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.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. 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 places?
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. 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. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Circuits can go down in Edinburg even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Edinburg, Texas have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize 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. 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.
access to The Internet costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Are remote offices able to work at all? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share essential data? 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. 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 you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
What if your company could not function at all without the web? Maybe your business depends on it completely. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. You are now, essentially, 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 the providers that you are using reliable enough? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
If your company is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte Internet access circuit may suffice. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You have a midsized company in Edinburg; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple carriers would be great. 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.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. We’ll 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.
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