In today’s environment, companies in Fitchburg depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly reliant on our access to the internet.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Fitchburg organization probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point but which one is best?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Fitchburg.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. When choosing the right broadband internet for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
Workers for most companies in Fitchburg, Massachusetts have some need to access the web during the course of their job. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information communicate with third parties.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the internet at the same time.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed organization access to The web if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. These can usually be found in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? 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 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 organization. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. It is advisable that high-speed access to The Internet be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants 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. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your company only; no sharing. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
Here, carriers 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.
Fitchburg, Massachusetts has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The net is greater. Please think about the following scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process or take new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
What if your company could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your business depends upon it completely. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are essentially out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. In review:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You will need higher speed access to The net if you have a medium sized business in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Availability and costs vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with different sites, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. 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.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
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. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.