The lifeblood of Edmond, Oklahoma companies doing organization in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly dependent on our access to the internet.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the internet is everywhere you look. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point: what is right for your company in Edmond?
Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Is it used to network with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Edmond, Oklahoma and remote sites rely on this.
Have you thought about what happens to your business if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Edmond, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The web if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you performing 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.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Edmond that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the internet with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your company 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 company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? 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. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The net is important. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
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.
Circuits can go down in Edmond, Oklahoma even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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 there is some protection, there is also some risk.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Edmond. 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. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Consider the following:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the center of your company. 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? Is work even possible at your other places? Process or take new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software organization is running. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Is the net integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are done. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your business needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Edmond, Oklahoma requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of organization or offices. Redundant circuits are essential. Different providers are desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. 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 you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
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