These days, companies in Lombard, Illinois count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The net.
We are going to, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The net.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point: what is right for your business in Lombard, Illinois?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your company? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Lombard.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your business suffer from the lull? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Lombard, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
The best solution may depend upon how many employees you have. 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.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The Internet if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you routinely backup? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Does your company require employees to share files using a 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. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Organization high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Lombard that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several locations?
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. 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 locations?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a organization with a single office that needs to surf the web. 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. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Some providers offer customers 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 business. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
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. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Lombard, Illinois, circuits do go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. 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.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Lombard, Illinois. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Think about the following situations:
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. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your places whether you have two or two thousand. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
What if your organization could not function at all without the net? Maybe your organization relies on it completely. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Looks like you are now out of business. Is redundancy enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
You clearly have several choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. As a high-level summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
If you have a midsized organization in Lombard, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will 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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.