In today’s world, San Angelo companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The Internet.
Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.
Our uses of the web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the net has a broad presence. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point: what is right for your organization in San Angelo, Texas?
Prior to selecting a service, your business must figure out its needs. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? You may be hosting the data in San Angelo and remote locations rely on this.
What will happen to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? Is uptime essential? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in San Angelo, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in San Angelo that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. 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.
Consider whether your company hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three sites?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain 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 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. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a 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. 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. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
While certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in San Angelo, Texas, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. 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.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different providers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
If you want to maximize redundancy in San Angelo please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central company spaces or data centers. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
The cost of dependable access to The Internet pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal company 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? Are calls lost or dropped? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Dispense and receive data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your company. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and speak with your system? What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Your business is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. Your company is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have several choices. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. Essentially:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company 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. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. 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 San Angelo requires that you have higher-speed access to the web. 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. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Companies with different places, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits are a necessity. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
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. 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. 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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