The lifeblood of Montgomery companies doing organization in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The net. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the internet 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 chat, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. What does your Montgomery, Alabama company need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Montgomery that remote sites rely upon?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? How much downtime can your organization withstand? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
For most companies in Montgomery, some or all of the employees need access to the net. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have 50 employees who are using the net simultaneously, you may need more.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The Internet if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. If your business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Are you performing backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? 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.
You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Montgomery, Alabama that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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 net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Do you have your own company servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your company. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
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.
Montgomery, Alabama 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.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. 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.
You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Montgomery, Alabama that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different 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 to your company if you do not have reliable access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What about phone call quality? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the center of your organization. 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. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is 100% dependent on the net to properly function. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Basically, you are out of organization. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In summary:
If you are a small business, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your business.
You will need higher speed access to The net if you have a medium sized business in Montgomery, Alabama. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of organization or offices. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Varied providers are optimal. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
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