In today’s world, Marysville companies need dependable access to The web. It is the lifeblood of their company. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true no matter how large or small the company.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. How can your needs be met? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point: what is right for your organization in Marysville?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Marysville that remote sites rely upon?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is your success dependent on uptime? Before buying, these are several of the questions you need to answer.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your business. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Marysville, Washington, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If you have more than that, you may need more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. If your business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you perform backups at your company? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Marysville, Washington that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied 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. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse 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 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. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
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.
Marysville, Washington has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Try using redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Marysville. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
Even though access to The Internet comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Please think about the following scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your company. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your locations. This is true whether you have 3 places or 2000 places. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Share essential data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all count on. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your business is completely reliant on the net. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Looks like you are now out of organization. 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.
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Marysville, Washington requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Varied providers are optimal. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers before choosing the right one. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers 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.
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. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll 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. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.