Richmond High-Speed Access To The Web

Richmond, Virginia High Speed Access to the World Wide Web: Accessing Metro Ethernet, Organization Broadband Internet and Gigabit Internet

In today’s world, Richmond, Virginia companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The net.

Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.

The use of the net is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the best fix for your requirements? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Will your Richmond business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?

Accessing the web: Ascertaining Your Organization Need

Your organization must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Do remote sites count on you hosting the data in Richmond?

What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your company? How much uptime is essential to your organization? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.

Evaluating Richmond, Virginia High Speed Internet Solutions

High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. Many service providers toss out terms such as:

• Fast access to The web is for you!
• Business Internet service provider
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet provider
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS services
• Services related to point-to-point circuits
• Internet access circuits-5 Meg
• 10 megabyte Internet access
• Internet access-50 Meg
• Internet access circuits- One hundred Meg
• Session Initiation Protocol/ Sip trunk
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and that is only a few

… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?

Web Surfing and Company Internet Access

Workers for most companies in Richmond have some need to access the web during the course of their job. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or speak with clients.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have more than that, you may need more.

Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemWhen employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.

Are you regularly performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.

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.

Are you interested in high-speed organization Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. These can usually be found in Richmond in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually 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.

Maximize Internet-based Applications With High-Speed Internet Access

Does your organization 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 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? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several locations?

Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various 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. It is advisable that high-speed Internet access be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Richmond, Virginia V. Shared Cable Circuits

In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. 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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?

Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. 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.

Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.

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.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Company Internet Circuits in Richmond, Virginia

Circuits can go down in Richmond even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?

Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.

Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.

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. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.

Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct carriers. 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. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.

You should look for redundant circuits from providers in Richmond, Virginia that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.

What Will Not Having Enough Protection for Your Company Class High Speed Internet Cost You?

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 company is reliant on VoIP for phone service

The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are business that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available for your needs. What happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will they be full of static?

Your business is the central data point for multiple locations

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 business. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they take or process any orders at all? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with 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 if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

You are call center dependent on VoIP

Your business is completely reliant on the internet. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your organization is basically done with. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Richmond, Virginia Company

You have no shortage of options. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. To summarize:

If You Have a Small Company That Needs Internet Access

If you are a small business, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg Internet access circuit may be sufficient. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.

Mid-Sized Businesses access to The web – One Location

You have a mid-sized Richmond company; higher speed access to The Internet required. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet 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. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.

Internet Access and Your Mid-Sized Company: What You Needs

What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple places. They require redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your business, you will benefit.

If you are a larger company, an enterprise company or a are in the company of providing services using the Internet

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 must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.

You Can Get a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

Our engineers can help. We will analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your business running smoothly 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.