Because of today’s environment, companies in Lincoln, Nebraska count on the internet. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their company. The business functions of every company, whether it is a small company or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends on fast and reliable access to The net.
We’ll become increasingly reliant on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
The web has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. Your Lincoln, Nebraska company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting data in Lincoln? Do remote places rely on you?
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your organization? Does your company require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms 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.
Most companies in Lincoln require that some or all of their workers have access to the web. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information speak with third parties.
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. If you have more than that, you may need more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Do you backup information? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
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. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Lincoln, Nebraska that are already wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the internet with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your company headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? 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. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed access to The web is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. 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. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or business. No one else uses it. 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.
With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Circuits can go down in Lincoln even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same 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 protection, there is also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Lincoln, Nebraska have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize 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 company 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 Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (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 organization. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now, essentially, out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. Essentially:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
If you have a midsized organization in Lincoln, you will need higher-speed access to The web. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Availability and costs vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely essential to them. Multiple providers are highly desirable. 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 web circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. 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.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your company with the resources it needs.
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