Because of today’s environment, companies in Missouri City, Texas count on the net. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, rely on reliable and fast access to The web.
Our reliance on access to the net will become greater in the near and distant future.
The web has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Missouri City business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the net? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Missouri City, Texas?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is uptime required? You must answer these questions before you buy.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… 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.
For many, if not all, companies in Missouri City, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the internet is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the internet at the same time.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The web if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On 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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Business high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Missouri City, Texas 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.
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, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the internet with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Your business may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? 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? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several 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 company. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied sites?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast Internet access is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Missouri City, Texas, circuits do go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Missouri City have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical 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. Please think about the following scenarios:
If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail company operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate necessary data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your company is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your company is basically done with. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. Essentially:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a mid-sized Missouri City, Texas company; higher speed access to The web required. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. 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 net circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. 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 company.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.