These days, companies in Lincoln Park, Michigan depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, relies on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the net will become greater in the near and distant future.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What do you need? Is a cable modem sufficient? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet? What does your Lincoln Park, Michigan organization need? Does it require 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 company must assess its needs. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? Perhaps you, in Lincoln Park, are hosting the data and remote locations depend upon this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your business afford the downtime? Is your success dependent on uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The Internet. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Lincoln Park, Michigan, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the net may be needed.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you routinely backup? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
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. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. 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 reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. 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.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the carriers 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 Lincoln Park, Michigan, problems arise and circuits can fail. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. 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 Lincoln Park please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider the following:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. You may operate a service like this: other systems talk to yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Does your organization completely rely on the net? No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Basically, you are out of organization. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
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. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. 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 organization.
You have a midsized company in Lincoln Park, Michigan; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple places. They need redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
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. You want your business to run smoothly. We will 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.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.