High Speed Internet Access in Oak Lawn, Illinois

Access to High Speed Internet in Oak Lawn, Illinois: Metro Ethernet Access, Company Broadband and Gigabit Internet

These days, companies in Oak Lawn, Illinois depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. Fast and reliable access to The Internet is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.

In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.

The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What can best meet your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Oak Lawn company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point but which one is best?

Defining Your Business’s access to The Internet Needs

Prior to selecting a service, your organization must figure out its needs. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Oak Lawn, Illinois? Do remote places rely on you?

What happens to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

Evaluating Oak Lawn High Speed Internet Solutions

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When choosing the right broadband internet for organization, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. You will hear service providers use terms like:

• Fast Internet access is for you!
• Corporate Internet
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet
• GbE or Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS protocol
• Point-to-point circuit services
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• Internet access circuits- ten megabytes
• Fifty-megabytes-Internet access circuits
• Internet access circuits- One hundred megabytes
• Sip trunking providers
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and much more

… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.

Surfing the Web: Organization Internet Access

For many, if not all, companies in Oak Lawn, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. 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 many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.

Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. If your company functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.

Do you routinely backup? 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.

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. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.

You may consider high-speed organization access to The Internet 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. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The Internet may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

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. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.

Maximize Internet-based Applications With High-Speed Internet Access

Does your company 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 corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office 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 net connection fails or is unreliable. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?

A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.

Shared Cable Network in Oak Lawn, Illinois V. Dedicated Bandwidth: Which Should You Choose?

In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. 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. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?

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. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.

With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the internet can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.

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.

High Speed Organization Internet Circuits in Oak Lawn: How About Redundancy?

Circuits can go down in Oak Lawn, Illinois even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Consider redundant circuits.

Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.

With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. 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. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and 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.

For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Oak Lawn. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.

Not Having Adequate Protection for your High-Speed Internet access: What is the Cost to Your Organization?

The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these scenarios:

The phone service in your office relies on Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

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 available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will you sound muffled?

Multiple places use your business as the central data point

Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your locations. This is true whether you have 3 sites or 2000 locations. What if your circuit fails? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Can they process transactions or new orders? Dispense and receive data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your organization requires. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?

The phones in your office, which functions as a call center, relies entirely on voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

Your company is completely dependent on the web. No outbound calls can be made should 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 company. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.

Choosing the Right Oak Lawn, Illinois High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company

You clearly have several choices. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. Essentially:

Internet Access Needs for Small Organization

You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The Internet circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.

Medium Sized Company in One Location: Access to the Internet

Having a medium or mid-sized company in Oak Lawn requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.

Internet Access and Your Mid-Sized Business: What You Needs

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. They need redundant circuits. Different providers are desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The Internet 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 company, you will benefit.

Larger corporations, enterprising clients and clients who provide services that are delivered via the Internet

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 to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.

Internet Demand and Internet Need: Receive Free Analysis

Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.

We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We will then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run company.

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.