These days, companies in Lenexa count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The organization functions of every company, whether it is a small organization or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends upon fast and reliable Internet access.
We’ll become increasingly reliant on Internet access as the months and years progress.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What does your Lenexa, Kansas business need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your business? You may be hosting the data in Lenexa and remote locations rely on this.
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is your success dependent on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While many service providers throw around terminologies 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.
Workers for most companies in Lenexa, Kansas have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. 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. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you routinely backup? 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 Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Lenexa that have already been wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Is your main organization office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. 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.
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during business hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
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. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
Realistically, while some providers in Lenexa offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of 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.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Lenexa, Kansas please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The Internet. Please think about the following scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are remote offices able to work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the net. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of business. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In review:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access 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.
Mid-sized businesses in Lenexa 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. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Your company faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. 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. We are going to examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly 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. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.