In today’s environment, companies in New Britain depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
Our dependence on access to The Internet will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What is the best fix for your requirements? Will a cable modem be adequate? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? What is best for your company in New Britain, Connecticut? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? Are you hosting the data in New Britain that remote locations depend upon?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is uptime required? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. Before you choose your broadband, 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:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
At any company in New Britain, Connecticut some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The net is required.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you backup information? 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 Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed business access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in New Britain. Carriers have already wired these buildings. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. 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. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
Realistically, while some providers in New Britain, Connecticut offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. 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. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in New Britain. 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. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Please think about the following scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 places. What happens if your circuit crashes? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Share essential data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your business? Do you depend on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. They are also unable to answer calls. Your business is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. 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. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
You have a midsized company in New Britain, Connecticut; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. 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. Again, costs and availability 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.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
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 will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers 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. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. You want your organization to run smoothly. We’ll look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.