Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Gilroy, California companies and their business. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the web is omnipresent. What is the best fix for your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What does your Gilroy, California business need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The web, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Gilroy, California.
What will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your company? Is uptime required? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Gilroy, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. Third party applications, company research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the internet may be needed.
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 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 internet during the same hours.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Are you performing routine 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.
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. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
High-speed organization 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 Gilroy that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty 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 company premises? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Gilroy even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
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 offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Gilroy, California have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. 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.
access to The net costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Consider these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites 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. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls lost or dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of organization 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 sites, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Share essential data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your organization is entirely Internet based. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. To recap:
Sometimes redundancy is not crucial to you. For example, If you are a small organization, with just one office location, a single access to The net circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You have a midsized company in Gilroy, California; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? 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.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.