Obtaining High-Speed Internet Access in Oak Park, Illinois

Oak Park, Illinois High Speed Access to The Internet: Metro Ethernet Access, Gigabit Internet and Organization Broadband Internet

Because of today’s environment, companies in Oak Park, Illinois rely on the web. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.

We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our Internet access.

The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. You may need Gigabit Internet. Will your Oak Park, Illinois business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The Internet point?

Accessing the net: Ascertaining Your Company Need

Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is real time data connection with cloud servers vital to your business? Are you hosting the data in Oak Park, Illinois and distant places or offices rely on you?

What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is your success reliant on uptime? Before buying, these are some of the questions that you must answer.

Analyzing Assorted High-Speed Internet Solutions in Oak Park

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the net. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:

• Fast access to The web is for you!
• Business Internet service
• Provider of broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS network
• Point to point data circuits
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• Internet access circuits- ten megabytes
• Fifty-megabytes-Internet access circuits
• Internet access circuits- One hundred Meg
• sip trunking / sip trunks
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and so many more

… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?

Web Surfing and Organization Internet Access

For most companies in Oak Park, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net 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, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.

Are you performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.

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? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.

You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Oak Park, Illinois that have already been wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The Internet may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

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. 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.

Hosted Applications Requiring High-Speed Internet Access

Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your business 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? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?

Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various locations?

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. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While fast access to The net is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Cable Circuit Sharing in Oak Park, Illinois Versus Dedicated Bandwidth: What is Right For You?

Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with 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. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your organization day. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. 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.

In these cases, the providers 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 Business Internet Circuits in Oak Park, Illinois: How About Redundancy?

Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Oak Park, circuits do go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”

The answer is redundant circuits.

We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.

The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. 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 offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.

The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different carriers to bring in 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.

For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Oak Park. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. 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. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Business High-Speed access to The web?

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:

Your company is reliant on VoIP for phone service

You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What about phone call quality? Will you lose calls? Will you sound muffled?

Your office or company is the main location for data and functions in that role for multiple locations

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. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 sites or 2000 places. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What about new orders? Share information? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?

Your business call center utilizes voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

Your business is completely dependent on the net. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? They are also unable to answer calls. You are now, essentially, out of company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

The Correct High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Oak Park, Illinois Company: How to Choose

You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To recap:

Internet Access for the Small Company Owner

If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Mid-Sized Company access to The Internet: One Location

If you have a midsized organization in Oak Park, Illinois, you will need higher-speed Internet access. 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 cost extra but it won’t double 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 and availability vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.

Access to the web for the Mid-Sized Business with Several Offices

Companies with different sites, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. 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 correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.

Bigger corporations, enterprise companies and providers of services that are delivered using Internet

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 absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this 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.

You Can Get a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.

Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.

Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.