Today’s environment demands that companies in Leominster have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the internet will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. How can your needs be met? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Do you need Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your Leominster organization need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the web? Do remote places count on you hosting the data in Leominster?
What will happen to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford the downtime? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your business. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
Workers for most companies in Leominster have some need to access the net during the course of their job. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the internet is required.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have more than that, you may need more.
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 they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you backup information? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with 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 business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Leominster that have been previously wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty 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? Is your main organization office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. 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 some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during organization hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
In these scenarios, providers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Leominster, Massachusetts, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. 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. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Leominster, Massachusetts. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization 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.
It is true that access to The Internet costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider these scenarios:
If your organization utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the 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. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing 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 talk to you to collect information and data. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
What if your business could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your organization relies on it completely. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Looks like you are now out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? 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 business. As a high-level summary:
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. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You have a mid-sized Leominster, Massachusetts company; higher speed Internet access required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. As always, 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. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!You want your business to run smoothly. We’ll 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.
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. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.