Reliable access to The web is the lifeblood of North Lauderdale, Florida companies and their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The net.
Internet access will become increasingly important to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What is the best fix for your requirements? Is a cable modem sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point: what is right for your company in North Lauderdale?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in North Lauderdale.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is your success reliant on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The Internet. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
For most companies in North Lauderdale, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
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.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? 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.
You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 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 company premises? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
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. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The web such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. 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. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some carriers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. 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.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Realistically, while some providers in North Lauderdale, Florida offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
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 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and 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 North Lauderdale. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. 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 sites. 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 access to The net comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please consider these situations:
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 your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What will happen to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Will calls be cut-off? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share information? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the web. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Looks like you are now out of business. 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. Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To summarize:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in North Lauderdale, Florida, need higher speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may 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.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company run 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. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.