In today’s environment, companies in Layton depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
We will become increasingly reliant on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
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 net is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? What is best for your organization in Layton, Utah? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg Internet access point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your business? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Layton.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime required? You must answer these questions before you buy.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. When choosing the right broadband for organization, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Most companies in Layton, Utah require that some or all of their workers have access to the web. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information talk to third parties.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? 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.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Layton that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. 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.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
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. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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. In your office out to the internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Layton, Utah even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. 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. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Layton that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. 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 to your company if you do not have reliable access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? 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. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of company does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate necessary data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your organization. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are essentially out of company. Is redundancy enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have several choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In summary:
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 access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You will need higher speed access to The net if you have a medium sized organization in Layton. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundancy is crucial. Different providers are desirable. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. 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 organization running smoothly and efficiently.
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. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
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. 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. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.