The lifeblood of Midland, Michigan companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The web. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
We will become increasingly dependent on access to The Internet as the months and years progress.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What can best meet your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Does your Midland, Michigan organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the net primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? You may be hosting the data in Midland and remote places rely on this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Does your business require uptime? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Companies in Midland need access to the net for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the web may be needed.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you routinely backup? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? 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 business access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Midland, Michigan 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.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. 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.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. If the internet 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.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The net is important. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. 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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
In these scenarios, carriers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
Realistically, while some carriers in Midland, Michigan offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Midland that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading 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.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following:
Is your business on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During company hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your locations. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 sites. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick 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. 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. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Is the web integral to the proper function of your organization? Do you count on it entirely? 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. You are now officially out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single access to The Internet circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. 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 Midland requires that you have higher-speed access to the net. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely important to them. Varied providers are optimal. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
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 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. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create 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 organization.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.