The lifeblood of Moline, Illinois companies doing organization in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We are going to become increasingly dependent on Internet access as the months and years progress.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the internet is everywhere you look. What do you need? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? What is best for your business in Moline, Illinois? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Why will you need the internet? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Moline? Do remote locations rely upon you?
What happens to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How will the downtime affect your organization? Is uptime essential? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Companies in Moline, Illinois need access to the internet for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on 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.
Do you backup information? 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.
Do you use a file sharing 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. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Moline, Illinois that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external sites?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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.
Moline, Illinois has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in your circuits. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Moline, Illinois. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
Even though access to The web comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Please think about the following scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the center of your company. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What about new orders? Dispense and receive data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a 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. 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 happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your company is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Looks like you are now out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a high-level summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Moline, Illinois, need higher speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Availability and costs 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.
Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. They need redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. 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 web 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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
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 current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.