In today’s world, Marana, Arizona companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their business. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Is a cable modem enough? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Your Marana organization probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Perhaps you, in Marana, Arizona, are hosting the data and remote places depend upon this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is your success reliant on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Choosing the correct broadband for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. You will hear providers use terms like:
… focus on what matters: what does your business need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Marana, Arizona, some or all employees need access to The net. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or speak with clients.
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 your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet 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. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you regularly performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
You may consider high-speed organization access to The web if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Marana, Arizona. Carriers have already wired these buildings. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net in thirty 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 corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. 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.
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
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. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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.
Realistically, while some providers in Marana, Arizona offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of 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. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Marana have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. 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.
It is true that Internet access 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:
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. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, depend on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What about new orders? Share information? 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. 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 organization servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your business is entirely Internet based. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now officially out of business. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You have no shortage of options. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. As a wrap-up:
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. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your organization.
You have a mid-sized Marana company; higher speed access to The Internet required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple locations. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Your organization faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your company with the resources it needs.
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.