Because of today’s environment, companies in Park Ridge rely on the web. Reliable access to the web is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the internet.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the net has a broad presence. What is the best solution for you? Can a cable modem suffice? Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Park Ridge company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point but which one is best?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your organization? Do remote locations rely on you hosting the data in Park Ridge, Illinois?
Have you thought about what happens to your business if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime essential? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in Park Ridge, Illinois, some or all employees need Internet access. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the net simultaneously.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
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.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with 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.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Park Ridge that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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 Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
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. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various locations?
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or organization. No one else uses it. 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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Park Ridge even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in reality, two kinds 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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. 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. 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 that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Park Ridge, Illinois. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from 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 places. 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.
Even though Internet access comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Please think about the following scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. It is possible that during normal business hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
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 company. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What if your circuit fails? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Is the net integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are now officially out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You have a mid-sized Park Ridge, Illinois company; higher speed access to The net required. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple providers would be great. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your company, you will benefit.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. 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. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent 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. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. You want your organization to run smoothly. We are going to look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
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 can often provide assessments within 48 hours.