Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida companies and their business. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The net.
We will become increasingly dependent on Internet access as the months and years progress.
The Internet is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the net is everywhere. What do you need? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Will your Palm Beach Gardens organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Perhaps you, in Palm Beach Gardens, are hosting the data and remote places rely on this.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your company? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? Is uptime essential? Before buying, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At most businesses including those in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, some or all employees need Internet access. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your business if you only have a few people working for you. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Does your company regularly conduct 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 a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced 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.
Organization high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida that have been previously wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The net may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. In fact, obtaining high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several places?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various locations?
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 organization office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your business. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
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. In your office out to the internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
Palm Beach Gardens has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Palm Beach Gardens please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please consider these situations:
If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be cut-off? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
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. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would it annoy you or destroy you? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. 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. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you depend on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
You have no shortage of options. Your organization needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To recap:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your company.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida requires that you have higher-speed access to the internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. 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 places face the greatest risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple carriers would be great. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. 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. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. 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 business.
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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.