Because of today’s environment, companies in Fort Worth, Texas count on the web. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Can a cable modem suffice? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. What is best for your company in Fort Worth? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Fort Worth, Texas that remote locations rely on?
Have you thought about what happens to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How will the downtime affect your company? Is uptime essential? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At any company in Fort Worth some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the net may be needed.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
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, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you regularly performing backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed company Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. These can usually be found in Fort Worth in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
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 Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its 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? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external locations?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, 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. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working 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. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. 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.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Fort Worth, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Fort Worth 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. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Please think about the following scenarios:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? 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. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are calls dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they take or process any orders at all? Disseminate needed information and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Is the web integral to the proper function of your company? Do you depend on it entirely? Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. They are also unable to answer calls. Your company is basically done with. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small business, 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. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You have a mid-sized Fort Worth company; higher speed Internet access required. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. 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. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. 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 organization needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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