These days, companies in Livermore rely on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their company. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable access to The web.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. What does your Livermore, California business need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Do remote places count on you hosting the data in Livermore?
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your organization? How much uptime is essential to your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The net. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. You will hear providers use terms like:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Livermore, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. If your company functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Are you regularly performing backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed company Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Livermore, California that are already wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. 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.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
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. High-speed access to The net is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your organization. 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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the web, 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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Livermore, California even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
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. 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 offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Livermore. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central business spaces or data centers. 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 of dependable access to The web pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about the quality of your calls? Will you lose calls? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your sites. This is true whether you have 3 sites or 2000 sites. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. 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? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your business is completely reliant on the web. 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 company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? 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 several choices. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. In review:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Livermore requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
If your company has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your organization running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
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. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.