The lifeblood of Lehi companies doing company in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The net. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, depend on fast and reliable Internet access.
Internet access will become increasingly important to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The web will only grow as time goes on.
The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution to meet your needs? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Does your business in Lehi need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used to network with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Lehi and remote sites rely on this.
What happens to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is your success dependent on uptime? Before making a purchase, these are a few of the questions that you must answer.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. When choosing the right broadband internet for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in Lehi, Utah, some or all employees need access to The web. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or communicate with clients.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. 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.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Does your company regularly conduct backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you 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.
Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Lehi that are already 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. Also, securing high-speed access to The web 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? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
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. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
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. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your organization 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.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. 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 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Lehi, Utah, problems arise and circuits can fail. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. 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. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Lehi, Utah have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
Even though access to The Internet comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Consider the following:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites 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. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
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 business. Whether you have 2 locations, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct 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 communicate with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is 100% reliant on the net to properly function. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. Essentially:
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. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your company.
Mid-sized businesses in Lehi should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely important to them. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. You want your company to run smoothly. We are going to look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.