The lifeblood of Pleasanton companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The Internet. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We are going to, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our access to The Internet.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the net is omnipresent. What can best meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet? Your Pleasanton, California 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?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your organization. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Pleasanton, California and distant locations or offices rely on you?
Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your company? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Pleasanton, California, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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 company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Business high-speed access to The Internet may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Pleasanton, California that are already wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. 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.
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? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail company with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
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. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
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. 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. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular 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. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
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.
Pleasanton, California has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers 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 reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Pleasanton, California 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 attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Although access to The Internet comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please consider these situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about the quality of your calls? Are calls lost or dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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 locations, 250, or 2000, they all depend on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are your other offices able to do any work? What about new orders? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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. Do you operate a service where other systems talk to yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your business is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. Your organization is basically done with. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a high-level summary:
If you are a small organization, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The web circuit may be sufficient. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You will need higher speed access to The net if you have a medium sized organization in Pleasanton, California. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net 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. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Different carriers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. As always, 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 best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point 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. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Your organization faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.