High Speed Internet Access in Mount Prospect

Mount Prospect, Illinois High Speed Access to the World Wide Web: Accessing Metro Ethernet, Company Broadband and Gigabit Internet

In today’s environment, companies in Mount Prospect, Illinois depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.

We will 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 net is everywhere you look. What is the right solution for your requirements? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Mount Prospect, Illinois business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point but which one is best?

Accessing the web: Ascertaining Your Organization Need

Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your business? Are you hosting the data in Mount Prospect, Illinois and distant sites or offices rely on you?

What will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Before buying, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Mount Prospect, Illinois

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. 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 company. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:

• High-speed Internet access service
• Provider of Internet for Businesses
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metro Ethernet service
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS protocol
• Providers of point-to-point circuits
• 5 Meg Internet access
• We provide 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• We provide access to The net circuits-50 Meg
• One hundred Meg access to The web circuits provided
• sip trunking / sip trunks
• Personal, specific and dedicated Internet access
• … and much more

… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?

Business Access: Surfing the internet at Work

At most businesses including those in Mount Prospect, Illinois, some or all employees need Internet access. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your business if you only have a few people working for you. 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.

Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. If your organization 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? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.

Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced 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.

Organization high-speed access to The Internet may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Mount Prospect that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.

Web Applications Require Fast Internet Access

Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three locations?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied places?

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 adequate in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The web such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Shared Cable Circuits in Mount Prospect, Illinois Versus Dedicated Internet Bandwidth

In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?

Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. In this case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. 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.

As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.

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.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Business Internet Circuits in Mount Prospect

You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Mount Prospect, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?

Consider redundant circuits.

Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of 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. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much 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 want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Mount Prospect, Illinois. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from 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.

Not Having Company Class High Speed-Internet Access Protection May Cost You

It is true that access to The Internet costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider the following:

Your company relies on VoIP for its telephone service

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 organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about the quality of your calls? Are calls dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.

Your business is the central data point for multiple locations

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. All of your sites, whether 2 or 2000, rely on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of 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 you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?

Your call center uses VoIP

Is the internet integral to the proper function of your business? Do you depend on it entirely? No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are now officially 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 your current providers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?

The Correct High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Mount Prospect, Illinois Company: How to Choose

You clearly have many options. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. In review:

Internet Access and the Small Business

If your company is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The Internet circuit may suffice. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.

Your Single Location Mid Sized Company Needs Internet Access

You have a midsized company in Mount Prospect; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. 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. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.

Internet Access for the Medium Sized Company with Multiple Offices

What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple locations. Redundancy is crucial. Varied providers are optimal. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. 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 correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.

Bigger corporations, enterprise companies and providers of services that are delivered using Internet

If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.

Free Analysis: Internet Need and Demand

There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your organization needs. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.

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 organization 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 completed in as little as 48 hours.