These days, companies in Moorhead count on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true regardless of how large or small the business.
access to The net will become increasingly crucial to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The net will only grow as time goes on.
Our uses of the internet reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What can best meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Your Moorhead business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Is the net used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Moorhead.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
Workers for most companies in Moorhead, Minnesota have some need to access the net during the course of their job. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up organization information talk to third parties.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. 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 web at the same time.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. If your business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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 company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to 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 your location, high-speed organization Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. These can usually be found in Moorhead in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Your business may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
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. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Moorhead even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. 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 offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Moorhead, Minnesota. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
While access to The Internet is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The net. Contemplate these situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will you sound muffled?
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. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are your other offices able to do any work? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. 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 if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your organization is completely dependent on the internet. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. Basically, you are out of company. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your organization budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In summary:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You will need higher speed Internet access if you have a medium sized business in Moorhead, Minnesota. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
If your company has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Varied providers are optimal. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Your organization can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. 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. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. 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 expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We’ll 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.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.