Because of today’s environment, companies in New Bedford rely on the web. Reliable access to the web is the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our Internet access.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What is best for your business in New Bedford, Massachusetts? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the internet? You may be hosting the data in New Bedford, Massachusetts and remote locations rely on this.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime essential? You must answer these questions before you buy.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in New Bedford need access to the net for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. access to The Internet may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
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 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. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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? 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.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in New Bedford, Massachusetts that are already wired by a carrier. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than 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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While fast access to The web is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
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. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? 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 situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your organization. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
In these cases, the carriers 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in New Bedford, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of 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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. 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.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in New Bedford, Massachusetts have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central locations. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Contemplate these scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about the quality of your calls? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company enterprise. The kind of organization does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak 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 other systems can’t connect to your office servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Does your company completely rely on the net? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. 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 business. Is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not crucial to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single access to The Internet circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
If you have a midsized company in New Bedford, you will need higher-speed Internet access. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. 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. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
Companies with different places, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple providers would be great. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple providers in addition to redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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