Because of today’s environment, companies in Kirkland, Washington rely on the net. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true regardless how large or small the organization.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Your Kirkland, Washington business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point but which one is best?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Do remote locations count on you hosting the data in Kirkland, Washington?
What will happen to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to The web is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your business. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Kirkland, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information speak with third parties.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. 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 more than that, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” 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.
High-speed business access to The net like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in Kirkland, Washington in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Do you have your own organization servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three sites?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed access to The Internet is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during company hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Circuits can go down in Kirkland even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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 regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in 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 redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Kirkland, Washington. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. 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 locations. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please think about the following scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will they be full of static?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 places. What if your circuit fails? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate essential files and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems talk to yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are essentially out of business. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not crucial to you. For example, If you are a small organization, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Kirkland, need higher speed access to The web. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Companies with different sites, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits are essential. Different carriers are desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed 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.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers can help. We will 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 organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.