The lifeblood of Logan, Utah companies doing company in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for companies to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.
In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly reliant on our access to the net.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What do you need? Will a cable modem be sufficient? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your Logan organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your business, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is it used to network with cloud servers? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Logan, Utah.
What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is uptime essential? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The web. 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:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At any company in Logan, Utah some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information communicate with third parties.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your organization if you only have a few people working for you. If your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
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 business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Does your company regularly conduct backups? 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? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Logan that have been previously wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
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. 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.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite 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?
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. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your company, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
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 Internet 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. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your business. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? 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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Logan, circuits do go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Logan. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Think about the following situations:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices 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. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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 sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Is work even possible at your other places? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential information with anyone? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and talk to your system? You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The Internet circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized company in Logan, Utah. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net circuits. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
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 will formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We are going to create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please click here if you wish to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Alternatively, call our office to schedule an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.