Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Elkhart, Indiana companies and their company. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
We will become increasingly dependent on access to The net as the months and years progress.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. How can your needs be met? Is a cable modem sufficient? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your organization in Elkhart?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Elkhart, Indiana.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your company withstand? How much uptime is essential to your organization? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Companies in Elkhart, Indiana need access to the net for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Third party applications, company research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the web may be needed.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. 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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you backup information? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
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? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
You may consider high-speed business access to The net 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 Elkhart, Indiana that are already wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
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 net with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three locations?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct company. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. 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. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your business. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Elkhart, Indiana, problems arise and circuits can fail. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. 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. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Elkhart. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
It is true that access to The net costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider these scenarios:
Is your company on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? 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 available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Are remote offices able to work at all? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and speak with your system? What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you rely on it entirely? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are now, essentially, out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your business needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a wrap-up:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your company.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Elkhart requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run 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. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Your organization faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers can help. We are going to analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will 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 business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.