In today’s world, New Haven, Connecticut companies need dependable access to The Internet. It is the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, count on fast and reliable access to The Internet.
Our dependence on Internet access 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 internet is everywhere you look. How can your needs be met? Is a cable modem sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Your New Haven, Connecticut 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 Internet point but which one is best?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in New Haven, Connecticut.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential? Before buying, these are several of the questions that you need to answer.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. 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 business. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Workers for most companies in New Haven have some need to access the net during the course of their job. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you backup information? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in New Haven, Connecticut. Providers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite 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. If the internet connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The Internet including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. 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. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Circuits can go down in New Haven even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same 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. 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.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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 New Haven, Connecticut that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are the calls going to be dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. 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 will happen if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Can they process transactions or new orders? Circulate essential files and data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. 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. Do you operate a service where other systems speak with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your company is completely dependent on the web. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Looks like you are now out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. In review:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The net circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Mid sized companies with a single office in New Haven, need higher speed access to The net. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely important to them. Different providers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. 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. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We’ll then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running 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.