The lifeblood of Greenville companies doing company in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. Fast and reliable access to The Internet is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
access to The Internet will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the net has a broad presence. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Your Greenville organization probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Do remote places count on you hosting the data in Greenville, North Carolina?
What will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your business afford the downtime? How much uptime is essential to your business? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
At any company in Greenville, North Carolina some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If you have 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Does your business regularly conduct 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.
Does your business use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? 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 Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its 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? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
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. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse 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. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
While certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in Greenville, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come 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. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Greenville. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading 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.
It is true that access to The web costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Think about the following situations:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. 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? What will happen to the strength and quality of that call? Are the calls going to be dropped? 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. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
What if your company could not function at all without the net? Maybe your company depends on it completely. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. Looks like you are now out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your organization needs and your budget. In summary:
If you are a small company, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The web circuit may be sufficient. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
If you have a midsized company in Greenville, you will need higher-speed access to The net. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your business has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. Different providers are desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to 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 Internet 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.
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. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to redundant hardware. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Your organization faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your business needs. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. You want your organization to run smoothly. We will look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please click here if you wish to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Alternatively, call our office to schedule an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.