These days, companies in Mesa depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. All companies rely on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true irrespective of how large or small the organization.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Will your Mesa, Arizona organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Do remote sites rely on you hosting the data in Mesa?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Mesa, Arizona, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.
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.
Are you regularly performing backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Mesa, Arizona 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.
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. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? 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. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different locations?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. High-speed access to The web 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 not be able to accomplish this.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. 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. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
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. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
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.
Realistically, while some carriers in Mesa, Arizona offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. 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.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Mesa. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different 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.
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. Please consider these situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During company hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your requirements. What will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office is the center of your business. 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. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Dispense and receive data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Does your business completely rely on the web? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. They are also unable to answer calls. You are essentially out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You have no shortage of options. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. Essentially:
If you are a small organization, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Mesa requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your business has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.
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. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? 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.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
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. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.