These days, companies in Grand Island rely on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their business. The organization functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, relies on fast and reliable access to The net.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more dependent on access to the web.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Does your organization in Grand Island need one of these: 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg access to The net 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. 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 net? You may be hosting the data in Grand Island, Nebraska and remote sites rely on this.
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
Companies in Grand Island, Nebraska need access to the internet 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 net is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the internet during the same hours.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you performing routine backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed business access to The web, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Grand Island that are already wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
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? 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 sites?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. People can’t work if you have no 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?
For one office or a small company with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. 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.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Grand Island, Nebraska, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Grand Island please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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 underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Please consider these situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During business 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? What about the quality of your calls? Will you lose calls? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Are remote offices able to work at all? Process or take new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your business is 100% reliant on the net to properly function. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. Essentially:
If you are a small business, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. 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. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a mid-sized Grand Island, Nebraska company; higher speed Internet access required. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
If your organization has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. 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.
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.