In today’s environment, companies in Panama City depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The business functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
We are going to become increasingly dependent on Internet access as the months and years progress.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is certainly ubiquitous. How can your needs be met? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. Will your Panama City business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
Prior to selecting a service, your business must figure out its needs. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Panama City.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How will the downtime affect your company? Is your success dependent on uptime? Before buying, these are several of the questions that you must answer.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At any company in Panama City some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or speak with clients.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your company if you only have a few people working for you. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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.
Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Panama City that have been previously wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends 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? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail business with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three sites?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct business. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The web is important. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Panama City, circuits do go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Panama City, Florida please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? 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. 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.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these scenarios:
Is your business on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? 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. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are done. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. As a wrap-up:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
If you have a midsized business in Panama City, Florida, you will need higher-speed access to The net. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling 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. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. 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. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. 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 analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We’ll then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.