Because of today’s environment, companies in Oro Valley, Arizona count on the web. Reliable access to the net is the lifeblood of their business. All companies depend on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true regardless of how large or small the organization.
In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly dependent on our access to the internet.
The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Does your company in Oro Valley, Arizona need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your business, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your company? Are you hosting data in Oro Valley? Do remote locations rely on you?
Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your company? Is uptime essential? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the web. 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. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in Oro Valley, some or all employees need access to The net. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the web may be needed.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you performing backups? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed business 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 Oro Valley, Arizona. Providers have already wired these buildings. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
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 company headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your business 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 locations?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your company only; no sharing. 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.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these scenarios, providers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
Oro Valley, Arizona has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. 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. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. 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. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Oro Valley, Arizona have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize 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. 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 Internet costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider the following:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share essential information with anyone? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. You may operate a service like this: other systems communicate with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
What if your company could not function at all without the internet? Maybe your company depends on it completely. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are done. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
Clearly, there are many choices. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. As a wrap-up:
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. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Oro Valley requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Again, costs and availability vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
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 will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your organization. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.