The lifeblood of Everett companies doing company in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The Internet. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We are going to, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The net.
The web has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the internet is certainly ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Will a cable modem be adequate? Metro Ethernet? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Will your Everett organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Why will you need the internet? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Everett that remote places depend upon?
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? How much uptime is essential to your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Everett, Washington, some or all employees need access to The Internet. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have 50 employees who are using the net simultaneously, you may need more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? 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. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed business access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Everett that have been previously wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
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. Also, securing high-speed access to The net using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external sites?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various locations?
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. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. 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 organization day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
Here, providers 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Everett, problems arise and circuits can fail. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Everett, Washington please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Please consider these situations:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail company operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your locations whether you have two or two thousand. What if your circuit fails? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Are your other offices able to do any work? What about new orders? Circulate necessary 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 operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Your business is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You have no shortage of options. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. As a wrap-up:
If your business is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The net 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 mid-sized Everett, Washington company; higher speed access to The Internet required. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The web circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. 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.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple carriers would be great. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is crucial to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to 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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.