These days, companies in Richmond count on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their organization. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, depend on fast and reliable access to The Internet.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on 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 web has a broad presence. What solution bet fits your needs? Will a cable modem be adequate? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. Your Richmond, California company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Richmond, California and remote locations rely on this.
What happens to your organization if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How might the downtime cause problems for your company? Is your success dependent on uptime? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While you are likely to hear some providers toss around terms such as:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Richmond, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Do you routinely backup? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Your organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The Internet such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Richmond, California that are already wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple 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. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Richmond, problems arise and circuits can fail. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. 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. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Richmond, California. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. 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 locations. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
While access to The Internet is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The net. Please consider these situations:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What will happen to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail company operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all rely 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? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Process new orders? Dispense and receive data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. 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. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight rates, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
Your company is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are done. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have several choices. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. In review:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. 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.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Richmond, California requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your organization has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. Having several providers would afford extra protection. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
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. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your organization running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
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