In today’s environment, companies in San Buenaventura depend on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies depend on reliable and quick Internet access. This is true irrespective of how large or small the company.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly dependent on our access to the web.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Your San Buenaventura, California company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point but which one is best?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your company really needs. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in San Buenaventura, California.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? Will your company suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The web. An analysis of the costs and benefits should be done prior to choosing the broadband that is correct for your organization. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At most businesses including those in San Buenaventura, California, some or all employees need access to The Internet. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. 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 business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
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.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in San Buenaventura in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
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 access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external places?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. 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.
For one office or a small business 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. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many 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. 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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. 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? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. 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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
San Buenaventura, California has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in San Buenaventura have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. 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 organization spaces or data centers. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
While access to The web is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The web. Consider the following:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled?
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. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What about new orders? Share information? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your organization. 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. 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 happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? They are also unable to answer calls. You are now officially out of business. 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?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. As a wrap-up:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Mid-sized businesses in San Buenaventura should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundancy is crucial. Having several providers would afford extra protection. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The net circuit providers. Your company can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.
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 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. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we’ll generate a cost effective plan that provides your business with the resources it needs.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.