Today’s environment demands that companies in Lincoln have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The Internet will only grow as time goes on.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is ubiquitous. What is the best fix for your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? Does your company in Lincoln, California need one of these: 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Lincoln, California that remote places depend upon?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Does your company require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. 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 organization. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Companies in Lincoln need access to the internet for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information communicate with third parties.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. 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. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you regularly performing 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed organization access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Lincoln that have been previously wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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. 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.
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 hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct business. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. 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 getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
Some providers offer customers 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.
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 organization out to the internet, 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.
Lincoln, California has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. 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.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different providers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Lincoln that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central locations. 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.
Although access to The Internet comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please think about the following scenarios:
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. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail business operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Whether you have 2 locations, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential data? 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 operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your organization is 100% reliant on the internet to properly function. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Basically, you are done. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. Essentially:
If you are a small company, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg Internet access circuit may be adequate. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Lincoln, California requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
If your company has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The net circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
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. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.