Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Roseville companies and their organization. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more dependent on our access to The net.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Will your Roseville business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Roseville, Michigan and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your company suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the web. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
At any company in Roseville some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the net if they are to properly perform their job duties. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information speak with third parties.
The best solution may depend upon how many employees you have. 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 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 backup information? 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 a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” 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.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Roseville, Michigan. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Your organization may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different 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. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers 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. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Roseville even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types 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. 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Roseville 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. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. 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.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable access to The web will be far greater than you may realize. Please consider these situations:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization 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 it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be cut-off? 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 sites, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate necessary data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. 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 operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their organization elsewhere?
Your organization is completely reliant on the net. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are now officially out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a wrap-up:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. 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 business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You will need higher speed Internet access if you have a medium sized organization in Roseville, Michigan. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs 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.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple carriers would be great. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Your company can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your organization requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We’ll examine your demand levels and current usage. We will then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.