The Internet in Meridian: High-Speed Access

Access to High Speed Internet in Meridian: Metro Ethernet Access, Organization Broadband and Gigabit Internet

In today’s environment, companies in Meridian, Mississippi depend on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their company. All companies rely on reliable and quick access to The net. This is true irrespective of how large or small the organization.

We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our Internet access.

From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the Internet is ubiquitous. What is the right solution for your requirements? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Does your Meridian, Mississippi organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point?

Defining the Company Need for Internet Access

The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting data in Meridian, Mississippi? Do remote places rely upon you?

What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential? Before buying, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.

Looking at Different High Speed Internet Solutions: Meridian, Mississippi

Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the web. When picking the correct broadband, 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
• We provide broadband cable modems
• Provider of Metro Ethernet
• Gigabit Internet
• MPLS service provider
• Providers of point-to-point circuits
• 5 Meg Internet access
• We provide 10 Meg access to The net circuits
• 50 Meg access to The web circuits
• We provide 100-megabyte access to The web circuits
• We provide sip trunks
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and that is only a few

… 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.

Business Access: Surfing the net at Work

At any company in Meridian, Mississippi some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the net if they are to properly perform their job duties. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or communicate with clients.

The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your company if you only have a few people working for you. If you have more than that, you may need more.

Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.

Are you regularly performing backups? 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.

Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

High-speed company access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Meridian. Providers have already wired these buildings. 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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.

Hosted Applications Requiring High-Speed Internet Access

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 company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.

A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Meridian, Mississippi V. Shared Cable Circuits

Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during business hours. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?

Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers 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.

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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? 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.

Redundant High Speed Business Internet in Meridian, Mississippi: Why More Circuits?

Realistically, while some providers in Meridian offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?

Try using redundant circuits.

Redundancy basically comes in two forms.

The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.

To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Meridian, Mississippi. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.

What is the Cost of Not Having Adequate Protection for Your Organization Class High-Speed access to The net?

Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Consider the following:

Your company is reliant on VoIP for phone service

The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office 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? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?

Multiple sites use your company as the central data point

Your office is the center of your organization. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? What about new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Do you know what your organization needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.

You are call center reliant on VoIP

Your organization is 100% reliant on the internet to properly function. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are essentially out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Picking the Right High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Company in Meridian

You have no shortage of options. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To recap:

Internet Access for Smaller Businesses

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 web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.

Your Single Location Mid Sized Company Needs Internet Access

If you have a midsized company in Meridian, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Again, costs and availability vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.

Internet Access for the Medium Sized Company with Multiple Offices

Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Varied providers are optimal. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. 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.

Larger corporate clients, enterprise clients and providers of services delivered via the Internet

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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.

You Can Get a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Your organization 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. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.

Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.

If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.