These days, companies in Oakland Park depend on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable access to The web.
Our reliance on access to the internet will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What is the best fix for your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Does your Oakland Park organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
Your organization must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting data in Oakland Park? Do remote sites rely upon you?
What will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is your success dependent on uptime? Before buying, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.
High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
For most companies in Oakland Park, some or all of the employees need access to the net. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the internet is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. If you have more than that, you may need more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you routinely backup? 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.
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? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed company Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Oakland Park. Providers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Do you have your own business servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? 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. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central business 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. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the internet.
Here, providers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Oakland Park, circuits do go down. 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.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Oakland Park please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. 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.
It is true that access to The net costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these situations:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? 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 the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your business. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate necessary data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Does your organization completely rely on the internet? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have several choices. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. Essentially:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The web circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Oakland Park requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Different providers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. 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 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. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. 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.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.