Today’s environment demands that companies in Romeoville have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, count on reliable and fast access to The Internet.
We are going to, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our Internet access.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What is best for your company in Romeoville? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Your company 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? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Romeoville?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Does your company require uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the web. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
For most companies in Romeoville, some or all of the employees need access to the net. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or talk to clients.
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 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you routinely backup? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed business access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Romeoville, Illinois. Providers have already wired these buildings. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or company premises? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct business. If the net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. 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 company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or organization. No one else uses it. 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. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
In these scenarios, providers 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Romeoville, Illinois, problems arise and circuits can fail. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. 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.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Romeoville have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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 Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider the following:
Is your organization on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? It is possible that during normal organization hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about the quality of your calls? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office is the center of your company. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your sites whether you have two or two thousand. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share information? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. 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 offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to speak with you to collect information and data. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your organization? Do you count on it entirely? No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are now, essentially, out of business. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You have several different options to pick from. Your decision will be based on different factors including your organization needs and your budget. As a wrap-up:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a midsized company in Romeoville; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. 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 cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
If your company has several sites or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely important to them. Different providers are desirable. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop 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.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.