Today’s environment demands that companies in Fountain Valley, California have reliable Internet service in order to run their organization. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, depend on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your organization in Fountain Valley?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? You may be hosting the data in Fountain Valley, California and remote locations rely on this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your company? Can your company afford the downtime? Is uptime required? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in Fountain Valley need access to the net for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the internet is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your organization if you only have a few people working for you. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you perform backups at your company? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
You may consider high-speed company access to The net if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Fountain Valley that have been previously wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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. 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.
Your organization may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Is your main organization 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 hosting data for multiple office locations?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. 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 locations?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. 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.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Realistically, while some providers in Fountain Valley offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in essence, two types 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. 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.
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. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Fountain Valley. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. 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. 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.
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. Contemplate these 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? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls 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 responsible for granting access to data to all of your sites. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 places. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? Process new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Does your business completely rely on the net? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are out of business. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You have several different options to pick from. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To summarize:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized company in Fountain Valley, California. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
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. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your business needs. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and 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’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your organization needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.