The lifeblood of Pharr companies doing organization in the current environment relies on reliable Internet access. The business functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, relies on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What do you need? Is a cable modem enough? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your Pharr company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The net point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Pharr, Texas that remote places depend upon?
Have you thought about what will happen to your organization if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. When choosing the right broadband for business, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
Workers for most companies in Pharr, Texas have some need to access the web during the course of their job. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use 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.
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.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed business access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Pharr that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
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? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed access to The net is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. 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 are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your organization. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Pharr, Texas, problems arise and circuits can fail. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Consider redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at 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. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit 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. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Pharr that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 sites. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Please think about the following scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? 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 lost or dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your sites, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Is work even possible at your other locations? Process or take new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. 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?
Does your company completely rely on the web? Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Looks like you are now out of company. Is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. As a high-level summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The web circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Pharr, need higher speed Internet access. 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 example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Varied providers are optimal. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of providers and services for your business, you will benefit.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.