High-Speed Grand Forks, North Dakota Access to The Net

Business Broadband, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet: Grand Forks, North Dakota High Speed Internet Access

In today’s world, Grand Forks companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.

In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly reliant on our access to the internet.

The Internet 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 is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Your Grand Forks, North Dakota business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point but which one is best?

Access to the internet: Determining Your Business’s Needs

You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the net? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the internet? Perhaps you, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, are hosting the data and remote places rely upon this.

What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your company? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime essential? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Grand Forks

In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The Internet. An analysis of the costs and benefits should be done prior to choosing the broadband that is correct for your business. You will hear providers use terms like:

• Internet access at high-speeds
• Internet for businesses or Internet corporations
• Provider of broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS protocol
• Services related to point-to-point circuits
• Five megabyte access to The web circuit
• 10 Meg access to The web circuits
• Internet access- 50 megabytes
• One hundred megabytes- fast access to The web circuits
• Sip trunking providers
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and that is only a few

… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.

Business Internet access for Website Surfing

Companies in Grand Forks, North Dakota 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 talk to third parties.

The best solution may depend upon how many employees you have. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the net at the same time.

You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.

Do you routinely backup? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.

Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.

Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed business access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Grand Forks, North Dakota that have already been 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. Also, securing high-speed access to The net using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.

Hosted Applications Requiring High-Speed Internet Access

Do you have your own organization servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite 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 sites?

Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. 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 places?

If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.

Shared Cable Circuits in Grand Forks, North Dakota Versus Dedicated Internet Bandwidth

In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. 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. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?

Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.

Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the web, 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.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Organization Internet Circuits in Grand Forks

You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Grand Forks, North Dakota, problems arise and circuits can fail. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”

Consider redundant circuits.

Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.

With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. 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. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.

The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.

For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central company spaces or data centers. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.

What Cost Awaits if you do Not Have Enough High-Speed access to The web Protection for Your Company?

Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider these scenarios:

Does your business rely on Voice-over Internet Protocol for telephone service?

Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?

Your company functions as the primary data center for multiple external locations

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 places whether you have two or two thousand. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they take or process any orders at all? Circulate necessary data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. 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. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?

You have a large call center that is completely reliant on voice over Internet protocol

Your organization is completely reliant on the internet. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are now officially out of company. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Grand Forks, North Dakota Company

You clearly have several choices. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To summarize:

Internet Access Needs for Small Business

If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The Internet circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.

Mid-Sized Company Internet access: One Location

Mid-sized businesses in Grand Forks should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. To repeat, availability and prices vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.

Internet Access for the Medium Sized Company with Multiple Offices

Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company run as efficiently as possible.

Larger corporate clients, enterprise clients and providers of services delivered via the Internet

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 absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is crucial to ensuring uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. It is essential to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create 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 organization up and running at a reasonable cost.

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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.