Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Hollywood, Florida companies and their business. The organization functions of every company, whether it is a small company or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, relies on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the internet.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the Internet is ubiquitous. What do you need? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? Will your Hollywood business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg Internet access point?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the net? Are you hosting the data in Hollywood that remote sites rely on?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your company withstand? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
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. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your business need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Workers for most companies in Hollywood, Florida have some need to access the net during the course of their job. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. 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.
Are you regularly performing 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.
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. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Hollywood, Florida in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Consider whether your organization hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different locations?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast access to The Internet is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and 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. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the web, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
While certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in Hollywood, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Hollywood, Florida that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Think about the following situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. 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 will happen to the strength and quality of that call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your company is entirely Internet based. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are now, essentially, out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use 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.
You clearly have several choices. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. To summarize:
If your business is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The web circuit may suffice. 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 business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid-sized businesses in Hollywood, Florida should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. 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. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Varied providers are optimal. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. 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. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your organization run as efficiently as possible.
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 vital 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. 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. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your organization running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.