The lifeblood of Maplewood, Minnesota companies doing company in the current environment relies on reliable Internet access. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The net will only grow as time goes on.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Is a cable modem enough? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? What does your Maplewood company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Maplewood?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your business? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
Workers for most companies in Maplewood, Minnesota have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you routinely backup? 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.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on your location, high-speed organization access to The web, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Maplewood, Minnesota that have already been wired by a carrier. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
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. 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.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various locations?
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. It is advisable that high-speed access to The net be available at the central business office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. 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?
Other providers do offer 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 company. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Maplewood, Minnesota has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. 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 protection, there is also some risk.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Maplewood, Minnesota. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
It is true that access to The net costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will the calls be choppy?
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 sites, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Are your other offices able to do any work? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Disseminate needed information and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to speak with you to collect information and data. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your company is completely dependent on the web. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. You are essentially out of company. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. Essentially:
If you are a small business, 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. 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.
You have a midsized company in Maplewood; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. 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 mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to 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.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers can help. We will analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We’ll 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 to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.