In today’s environment, companies in Fort Wayne, Indiana rely on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true irrespective of how large or small the company.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may be required. Will your Fort Wayne, Indiana company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your company really needs. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Fort Wayne? Do remote locations rely on you?
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 your success dependent on uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies 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 Fort Wayne need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. The net is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up business information speak 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 may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the internet during the same hours.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Are you performing backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” 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.
You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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 Internet 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. Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external places?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
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. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your business. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
Providers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Fort Wayne has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct carriers. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple providers or circuits. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider these scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. 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. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. 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 communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your company is 100% reliant on the internet to properly function. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. No calls could be answered either. You are now, essentially, out of business. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You have several different options to pick from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. As a wrap-up:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, need higher speed access to The web. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your business has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Different providers are desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
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