Because of today’s environment, companies in Hawthorne, California depend on the internet. Reliable access to the web is the lifeblood of their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our access to The web.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the Internet is ubiquitous. What is the right solution for your requirements? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. What is best for your business in Hawthorne? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Perhaps you, in Hawthorne, California, are hosting the data and remote places depend upon this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your business afford the downtime? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
For many, if not all, companies in Hawthorne, California, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The best solution may rely upon how many employees you have. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with 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.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Company high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Hawthorne that are already wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The Internet may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the internet with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
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. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your organization. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.
In these scenarios, providers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Hawthorne, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. 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.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Hawthorne that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. 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 established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Even though access to The net comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Think about the following situations:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will they be full of static?
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. Your circuit goes down, now what will happen? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Are remote offices able to work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Does your company completely rely on the web? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of business. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. To summarize:
If you are a small business, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The Internet circuit may be sufficient. 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 will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Mid-sized businesses in Hawthorne should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is crucial. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can 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 can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We’ll examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.