In today’s world, Kenosha, Wisconsin companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their business. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The Internet.
In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly dependent on our access to the net.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is certainly ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Will a cable modem be adequate? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What does your Kenosha business need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The web, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Kenosha? Do remote places depend upon you?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? Can your company afford the downtime? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
For many, if not all, companies in Kenosha, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the internet may be needed.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your organization if you only have a few people working for you. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you routinely backup? 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 a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
High-speed business Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Kenosha, Wisconsin that have been previously wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Consider whether your business 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? Is your organization 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. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits 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. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
In these cases, the providers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, circuits do go down. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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 security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Kenosha please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites 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? How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your company. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Can they take or process any orders at all? Disseminate needed information and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and talk to your system? 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 company is completely reliant on the net. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Your organization is basically done with. Is redundancy enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To recap:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Kenosha requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. 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 different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. They need redundant circuits. Different carriers are desirable. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here too, 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. Your company can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Your business 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. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
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. We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We will then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.
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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.