The Web in Fort Collins, Colorado: High-Speed Access

Accessing High Speed Internet in Fort Collins, Colorado: Gigabit Internet, Organization Broadband Internet and Metro Ethernet Access

In today’s environment, companies in Fort Collins, Colorado count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable access to The net.

We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our Internet access.

From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What is best for your company in Fort Collins, Colorado? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?

Internet Access: Defining the Business Need

Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Perhaps you, in Fort Collins, Colorado, are hosting the data and remote sites rely upon this.

What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before buying, these are a few of the questions that you must answer.

Evaluating Different High-Speed Internet Solutions in Fort Collins

Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While various providers will throw around terminology like:

• Fastest Internet access
• Provider of Internet for Businesses
• Provider of broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet service
• GbE or Gigabit Ethernet
• Multiprotocol label switching, also known as MPLS
• Point-to-point circuit protocol
• Five megabyte Internet access
• 10 Meg access to The net circuits
• High-speed 50-megabyte Internet access circuits
• 100 Meg Internet access circuits
• Leading SIP trunk authority
• Dedicated or “specific” Internet access
• … and countless others

… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.

Business access to The net for Web Surfing

Most companies in Fort Collins, Colorado require that some or all of their workers have access to the web. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your company if you only have a few people working for you. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.

You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.

Are you performing backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.

Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? 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 company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Fort Collins in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.

While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.

High-Speed Internet access Required for Hosting Applications

Consider whether your organization hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?

The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The net including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.

Which is Better for You in Fort Collins? Dedicated Internet Bandwidth or Shared Cable Circuits?

Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.

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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

Providers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Company Internet Circuits in Fort Collins

The truth is that circuits can go down in Fort Collins, Colorado even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Redundant circuits.

There are two types of redundancy to consider.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. 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 Fort Collins. 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. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.

What Cost Awaits if you do Not Have Enough High-Speed Internet access Protection for Your Business?

It is true that access to The web costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these situations:

You use VoIP for your organization telephone service

You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your requirements. What will happen to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?

Your office or business is the main location for data and functions in that role for multiple locations

Your office may be the working center of an entire business 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 offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate essential files and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by 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 rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?

Your call center uses VoIP

What if your business could not function at all without the web? Maybe your business depends on it completely. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Basically, you are done. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?

Choosing the Right Fort Collins High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Company

You have several different options to pick from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. In summary:

If You Have a Small Organization That Needs Internet Access

If you are a small organization, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The net circuit may be adequate. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.

Single Location Mid-Sized Organization and Internet Access

If you have a midsized company in Fort Collins, Colorado, you will need higher-speed access to The net. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Again, costs and availability vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.

Access to the web for the Mid-Sized Company with Several Offices

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They need redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your business.

Clients who provide services delivered via Internet, large corporate and enterprise clientele

If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. 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. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.

Internet Demand and Internet Need: Receive Free Analysis

Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. It is essential to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

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 will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.

You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.