Today’s environment demands that companies in Fort Myers have reliable Internet service in order to run their company. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. How can your needs be met? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your Fort Myers company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? You may be hosting the data in Fort Myers, Florida and remote places rely on this.
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Does your organization require uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. 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?
Most companies in Fort Myers, Florida require that some or all of their workers have access to the net. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the net may be needed.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Do you backup information? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
High-speed business Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Fort Myers that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
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 business. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?
For one office or a small company 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 Internet access is important. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple 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. 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. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
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. 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.
Circuits can go down in Fort Myers, Florida even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. 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 is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as 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. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Fort Myers, Florida that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. 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. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central company spaces or data centers. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
The cost of dependable access to The Internet pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will the calls be choppy?
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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 places. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share essential information with anyone? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their business elsewhere?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your business? Do you depend on it entirely? What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? They are also unable to answer calls. You are essentially out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. To summarize:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The Internet circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. 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.
You have a midsized company in Fort Myers, Florida; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. 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 best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
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. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Your company 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. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
Our engineers can analyze your 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 will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company 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 as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.