In today’s environment, companies in Lacey, Washington depend on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their business. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, count on fast and reliable access to The web.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the web is omnipresent. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your Lacey, Washington business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the internet? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Lacey, Washington.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your company? How much downtime can your business withstand? Does your business require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
For most companies in Lacey, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
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.
Are you performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
High-speed organization 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 Lacey that have been previously wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
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 access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several locations?
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 work without a solid Internet connection. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
For one office or a small company 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. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
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. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. In your office out to the web you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
Here, carriers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Lacey, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. 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. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Lacey. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central business spaces or data centers. 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.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The Internet. Consider the following:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your places whether you have two or two thousand. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process or take new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. 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. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. 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?
What if your organization could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your company depends upon it completely. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your business is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To summarize:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid-sized businesses in Lacey, Washington should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Again, costs and availability vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They need redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. 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 access to The net circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed 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. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your organization needs. It is important to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.