The lifeblood of Jefferson City, Missouri companies doing company in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true irrespective of how large or small the organization.
Our reliance on access to the net will become greater in the near and distant future.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. How can your needs be met? Is a cable modem enough? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your business in Jefferson City?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Jefferson City, Missouri and distant places or offices rely on you?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? Can your organization afford the downtime? How much uptime is essential to your company? You must answer these questions before you buy.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. Deciding on the right broadband internet is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. You will hear providers use terms like:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Jefferson City, some or all employees need access to The web. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the internet during the same hours.
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.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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.
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. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Are you interested in high-speed company Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Jefferson City that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Do you have your own company servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different locations?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Jefferson City, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Jefferson City. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Contemplate these situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What happens to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Is work even possible at your other locations? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are essentially out of company. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You have no shortage of options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To summarize:
If your organization 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. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You have a mid-sized Jefferson City company; higher speed access to The web required. 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. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We are going to 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 company.
Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.