High-Speed Hickory Access to The Net

Hickory High Speed Access to The Web: Metro Ethernet Access, Gigabit Internet and Organization Broadband Internet

Reliable access to The web is the lifeblood of Hickory, North Carolina companies and their organization. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.

In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the net.

The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. Will your Hickory business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg Internet access point?

Accessing the net: Ascertaining Your Organization Need

Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used to network with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Hickory and remote sites rely on this.

Have you thought about what happens to your business if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? You must answer these questions before you buy.

Analyzing Assorted High-Speed Internet Solutions in Hickory

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the web. When choosing the right broadband for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:

• High-speed Internet access
• Business Internet service
• Cable modems and broadband
• Metro Ethernet service provider
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Multiprotocol label switching, also known as MPLS
• point-to-point circuits
• five Meg access to The net circuits
• Ten megabyte Internet access
• We provide access to The Internet circuits-50 Meg
• Internet access circuits- One hundred Meg
• Leading SIP trunk authority
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and so many more

… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.

Web Surfing and Company Internet Access

For most companies in Hickory, some or all of the employees need access to the web. The net is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up business information talk to third parties.

The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.

Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.

Does your business regularly conduct backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.

Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.

High-speed organization Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in Hickory, North Carolina in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.

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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.

High-Speed Internet access Required for Hosting Applications

Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?

When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. 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.

An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The web such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Hickory, North Carolina V. Shared Cable Circuits

Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. 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. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

Some providers offer customers dedicated 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. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.

With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

Providers 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.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Business Internet Circuits in Hickory, North Carolina

You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Hickory, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?

Consider redundant circuits.

Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.

A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. 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. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. 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.

The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Hickory. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. 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.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Organization High-Speed access to The Internet?

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. Please consider these situations:

You use VoIP for your business telephone service

Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?

Your organization functions as the primary data center for multiple external locations

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. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to speak with you to collect information and data. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

You have a large call center that is completely reliant on voice over Internet protocol

Does your company completely rely on the internet? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Your organization is basically done with. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.

Choosing the Right Hickory High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company

You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. In summary:

Internet Access for Smaller Businesses

If your company is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte Internet access circuit may suffice. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Your Single Location Mid Sized Company Needs Internet Access

Mid sized companies with a single office in Hickory, need higher speed Internet access. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.

Internet Access for Mid-Sized Businesses with Several Locations

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.

Larger corporate clients, enterprise clients and providers of services delivered via the Internet

If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is crucial to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.

You Can Get a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Your company faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.

Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.

Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.