These days, companies in Pittsburg count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, rely on reliable and fast Internet access.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the net is omnipresent. How can your needs be met? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet? Does your organization in Pittsburg need one of these: 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Pittsburg, California.
Have you thought about what happens to your organization if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Pittsburg, California, some or all of the employees need access to the web. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or talk to clients.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have many employees who need to use the web 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. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Does your organization regularly conduct 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 business use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
You may consider high-speed business Internet access if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. These can usually be found in Pittsburg in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or company premises? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed 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 law firm? Do you host data for three or more external sites?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied 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 dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your company day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. 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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
In these scenarios, carriers 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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Pittsburg, circuits do go down. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Pittsburg. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central business spaces or data centers. 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.
It is true that access to The web costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Think about the following situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your 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 caliber of the call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, rely on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What about new orders? Circulate essential files and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your business is entirely Internet based. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your business needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. Essentially:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Pittsburg, California, need higher speed access to The Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. 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 access to The Internet circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your business. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. 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.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.