Obtaining High-Speed Internet Access in Joliet, Illinois

Joliet, Illinois High Speed access to The Web: Business Broadband Internet, Metro Ethernet Access and Gigabit Internet

In today’s environment, companies in Joliet depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, depend on fast and reliable access to The net.

In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly dependent on our access to the web.

The web has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the internet is certainly ubiquitous. What is the right solution to meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Does your Joliet business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point?

Determining your Company Need for Internet Access

The needs of your particular business 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 web? You may be hosting the data in Joliet, Illinois and remote locations rely on this.

What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your business? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? You must answer these questions before you buy.

High-Speed Internet Solutions in Joliet, Illinois: Evaluating Differences

Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. Deciding on the right broadband internet is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While various providers will throw around terminology like:

• Fastest Internet access
• Business Internet / Internet for business
• We provide broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet service provider
• Gigabit Internet services
• MPLS services
• point-to-point circuits
• 5 Meg Internet access
• Ten megabyte Internet access
• High-speed 50-megabyte Internet access circuits
• 100 Meg Internet access circuits
• We provide sip trunks
• Dedicated Internet line
• … and countless others

… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?

Surfing the Web: Company Internet Access

At most businesses including those in Joliet, Illinois, some or all employees need access to The Internet. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or speak with clients.

Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.

Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. 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? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.

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? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with 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 Joliet, Illinois in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.

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, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.

High-Speed Internet access Required for Hosting Applications

Consider whether your organization hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Maybe your business requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If the net 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 sites?

The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.

Cable Circuit Sharing in Joliet, Illinois Versus Dedicated Bandwidth: What is Right For You?

In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?

You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.

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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the web, 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.

Redundant High Speed Business Internet in Joliet, Illinois: Why More Circuits?

Joliet, Illinois has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”

You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.

We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.

The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.

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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.

The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Joliet. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.

Not Having Adequate Protection for your High-Speed access to The net: What is the Cost to Your Company?

Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Contemplate these scenarios:

You use VoIP for your business telephone service

If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. It is possible that during normal business hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will the calls be choppy?

Your business is the central data point for multiple locations

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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your sites. This is true whether you have 3 sites or 2000 sites. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Are remote offices able to work at all? Process or take new orders? Share essential data? Do you know what your company needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. 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. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?

The phones in your office, which functions as a call center, relies entirely on voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

Your business is entirely Internet based. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Looks like you are now out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

Picking the Right High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Joliet, Illinois Company

You clearly have several choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. As a high-level summary:

Internet Access for the Small Business Owner

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. 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 company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Mid-Sized Company Internet access: One Location

You will need higher speed Internet access if you have a medium sized business in Joliet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. 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.

Internet Access for the Medium Sized Company with Multiple Offices

If your organization has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Different providers are desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet 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 company, you will benefit.

Providers of services that rely on the net for their delivery, big corporate clients and enterprise customers

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 crucial 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. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. 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 help. We are going to analyze your requirements and 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 company up and running at a reasonable cost.

Please click here if you wish to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Alternatively, call our office to schedule an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.