In today’s environment, companies in Mesquite rely on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. Fast and reliable access to The web is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the web.
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? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Will your Mesquite, Texas organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your organization. Why will you need the internet? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the web? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Mesquite, Texas.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
At most businesses including those in Mesquite, Texas, some or all employees need Internet access. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. 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. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you routinely backup? 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 require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Mesquite that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. 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.
Consider whether your organization hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external locations?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct organization. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. 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 net. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The web including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during organization hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. 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.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your company out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Mesquite, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Mesquite, Texas that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different 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. Think about the following situations:
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 they use more bandwidth, there is less for available for your needs. What happens to your phone calls? What about the quality of your calls? Are calls lost or dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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. What if your circuit fails? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Dispense and receive data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. 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. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Does your company completely rely on the web? Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. Your company is basically done with. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
You have no shortage of options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small organization, with just one office location, a single access to The web circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You have a mid-sized Mesquite company; higher speed access to The web required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. 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. As a reminder; availability and costs may 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.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. They need redundant circuits. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. As always, 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. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. 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. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your business needs. 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. You want your organization to run smoothly. We will look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.