In today’s environment, companies in San Gabriel, California depend on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their company. Fast and reliable access to The web is needed for companies to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
We will, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our access to The Internet.
The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the internet is everywhere. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem enough? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your San Gabriel, California organization need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in San Gabriel, California?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? How will the downtime affect your organization? Does your company require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to The web is required by all businesses. When choosing the right broadband internet for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For most companies in San Gabriel, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The net is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you performing backups? 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.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Company high-speed access to The web may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
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.
Does your company host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?
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. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net 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.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your organization. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
Providers 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.
Realistically, while some carriers in San Gabriel offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in San Gabriel, California. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. 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 to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily 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. 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? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Can they process transactions or new orders? Circulate necessary data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to communicate with you to collect information and data. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your company is entirely Internet based. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? They are also unable to answer calls. Basically, you are out of organization. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To recap:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The net circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small business, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. 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 in San Gabriel should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are essential. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running 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. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.