Lake Charles, Louisiana High-Speed Access To The Net

Business Broadband Internet, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet: Lake Charles High Speed Internet Access

In today’s world, Lake Charles, Louisiana companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their organization. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for companies to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.

Internet access will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.

The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. What does your Lake Charles business need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?

Determining your Business Need for Internet Access

Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Do remote sites count on you hosting the data in Lake Charles, Louisiana?

Have you thought about what happens to your business if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Does your company require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Lake Charles

Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. 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 company. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:

• High-speed Internet access provider
• Provider of Internet for Businesses
• Cable modems and broadband
• Metro Ethernet experts
• Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS network
• Point-to-point circuit protocol
• Internet access circuits-five megabyte
• Ten megabyte access to The Internet provided
• Internet access- 50 megabytes
• High-speed access to The Internet circuits-100 megabytes
• Sip trunking providers
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and that is only a few

… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.

Business Internet access for Surfing the Worldwide Web

At any company in Lake Charles some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 web simultaneously.

Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.

Do you backup information? 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.

Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.

Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.

While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.

Web Applications Require Fast Internet Access

Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external locations?

When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various locations?

For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.

Shared Cable Circuits V. Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during company hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?

Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.

As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the web, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

In these cases, the carriers 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.

Backup With Lake Charles, Louisiana High Speed Business Internet Circuits

Circuits can go down in Lake Charles even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?

Consider redundant circuits.

Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.

A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.

The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Lake Charles, Louisiana. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central business spaces or data centers. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.

What is the Price of Not Having Adequate Protection for Your Company High-Speed access to The net?

Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Contemplate these scenarios:

Your company is reliant on VoIP for phone service

Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. 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 the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?

Your company is the central data point for multiple locations

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. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Process new orders? Circulate essential files and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Is an API utilized in your company so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? 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?

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Does your business completely rely on the internet? 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. You are now officially out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

Picking the Right High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Company in Lake Charles

You have several different options to pick from. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In summary:

Small Organization Internet Access

If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Business with One Location

Having a medium or mid-sized company in Lake Charles, Louisiana requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.

Internet Access and Your Mid-Sized Business: What You Needs

Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely essential to them. Varied providers are optimal. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. 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 correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.

Larger corporations, enterprising clients and clients who provide services that are delivered via the Internet

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. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. 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.

You May Receive an Internet Need and Internet Demand Analysis for Free

Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.

We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll 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 completed in as little as 48 hours.