The lifeblood of Greenacres, Florida companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The Internet. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.
In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly reliant on our access to the net.
Our uses of the internet reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What do you need? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Greenacres?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? You may be hosting the data in Greenacres, Florida and remote places rely on this.
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How will the downtime affect your organization? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. You will hear providers use terms like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For most companies in Greenacres, Florida, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is for company 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. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you routinely backup? 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.
Does your business use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
High-speed company access to The Internet like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Greenacres, Florida. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Also, securing high-speed access to The Internet using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your organization host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail business with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct company. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The net including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast access to The web is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit 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.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Greenacres, Florida, circuits do go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Greenacres, Florida. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The net is greater. Think about the following situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with 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 caliber of the call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
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. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. Your circuit goes down, now what will happen? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate essential files and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a 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 communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
What if your business could not function at all without the web? Maybe your organization depends upon it completely. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. Your organization is basically done with. Is redundancy enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. As a high-level summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The net circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
If you have a midsized company in Greenacres, you will need higher-speed access to The web. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of organization or offices. Redundant circuits are essential. Varied providers are optimal. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your organization run 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. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. 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.
Your company faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly 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. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.