In today’s environment, companies in Hartford rely on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable access to The Internet.
We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The web.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the internet is everywhere. What is the best fix to meet your requirements? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your Hartford business need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Perhaps you, in Hartford, are hosting the data and remote sites depend upon this.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your company? How much downtime can your company withstand? How much uptime is essential to your organization? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in Hartford, Connecticut, some or all employees need access to The net. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Hartford, Connecticut. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three locations?
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 organization. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. 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 locations?
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. While fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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 operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your business. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the web you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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.
Hartford has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
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. 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 there is some protection, there is also some risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are 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 Hartford please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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. 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.
access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Please think about the following scenarios:
If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about the quality of your calls? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? Can they take or process any orders at all? Disseminate needed information and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the net. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your company is basically done with. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You have several different options to pick from. Your organization needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To summarize:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The web circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Hartford, Connecticut, need higher speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your business has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events 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 business. 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.
Our engineers can help. We’ll analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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