High Speed Access To The Internet in Mankato, Minnesota

Mankato High Speed access to The Web: Organization Broadband, Metro Ethernet Access and Gigabit Internet

Today’s environment demands that companies in Mankato, Minnesota have reliable Internet service in order to run their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The Internet.

In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.

From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Mankato?

Defining Your Business’s access to The net Needs

Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting data in Mankato, Minnesota? Do remote locations rely upon you?

What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Does your organization require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.

High-Speed Internet Solutions in Mankato: Evaluating Differences

In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The web. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While various providers will throw around terminology like:

• High-speed access to the Internet
• Business Internet service provider
• Broadband cable modem services
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet provider
• Gigabit Internet services
• MPLS protocol
• Point to point data circuits
• five Meg Internet access circuits
• 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• Fifty-megabytes-Internet access circuits
• 100 Meg access to The net circuits
• We provide sip trunks
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and then some

… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.

Web Surfing and Organization Internet Access

For most companies in Mankato, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.

The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. 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.

Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.

Are you performing backups? 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.

Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.

Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The net may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.

Online Applications Need High-Speed access to The Internet

Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office sites?

Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many 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. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The Internet is important. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.

Which is Better for You in Mankato? Dedicated Internet Bandwidth or Shared Cable Circuits?

Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?

Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.

Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.

In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.

Mankato, Minnesota High Speed Business Internet Circuits: Redundancy

Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Mankato, Minnesota, circuits do go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?

The answer is redundant circuits.

There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.

A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.

For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Mankato. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Organization High-Speed Internet access?

The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:

Your company telephone utilizes voice-over Internet Protocol, or VoIP as it is commonly known

If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the 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 happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?

Multiple sites use your business as the central data point

Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, rely on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other sites? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Dispense and receive data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your organization. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software organization is running. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their organization elsewhere?

You are call center dependent on VoIP

Maybe your organization depends entirely on the web. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are now, essentially, out of company. Is redundancy enough? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company in Mankato, Minnesota

Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. In summary:

Internet Access for the Small Company Owner

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. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Company with One Location

Mid sized companies with a single office in Mankato, need higher speed access to The net. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.

Mid-Sized Businesses access to The Internet – Multiple Locations

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The web circuit providers before choosing the right one. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.

Clients who provide services delivered via Internet, large corporate and enterprise clientele

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. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.

Internet Demand and Internet Need: Receive Free Analysis

Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.

Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to 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.

An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.