These days, companies in Hendersonville, Tennessee rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The web.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. How can your needs be met? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What is best for your business in Hendersonville? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Hendersonville, Tennessee and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your company? Will your organization suffer from the lull? How much uptime is essential to your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the web. 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 business. You will hear providers use terms like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Companies in Hendersonville, Tennessee need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Third party applications, company research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the net may be needed.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you routinely backup? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Hendersonville in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. 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. In fact, obtaining high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Your organization may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied places?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your organization day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. 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. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
Hendersonville, Tennessee has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Hendersonville please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The Internet. Contemplate these situations:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Will calls be cut-off? Will they be full of static?
Your office is the center of your organization. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process new orders? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Do you operate a service where other systems speak with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Your business is entirely Internet based. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are essentially out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have several choices. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. To summarize:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single access to The Internet circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your organization.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Hendersonville, need higher speed Internet access. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your company has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. As always, 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 correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
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. 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. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.