The lifeblood of Port Arthur companies doing organization in the current environment depends on reliable access to The net. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The Internet. This is true regardless how large or small the company.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the net.
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 solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point: what is right for your business in Port Arthur?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Port Arthur, Texas.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is uptime required? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The Internet. Deciding on the right broadband internet is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Many 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.
Workers for most companies in Port Arthur have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
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 more than that, you may need more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? 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.
Business high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Port Arthur, Texas that have already been wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Also, securing high-speed access to The Internet using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Do you have your own organization servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied places?
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. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. 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. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs 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.
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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Port Arthur, problems arise and circuits can fail. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. 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 providers with different physical geographic pathways in Port Arthur, Texas. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Please consider these situations:
Your business is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices 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? How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will they be full of static?
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. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Dispense and receive data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your business. 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. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Does your business completely rely on the internet? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are essentially out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. To recap:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your business.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized company in Port Arthur. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. As a reminder; availability and costs may 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.
Businesses with many sites face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Different carriers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit 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. 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. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your business. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers can help. We’ll analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give 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. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.