Santa Cruz High-Speed Internet Access

Business Broadband Internet, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet: Santa Cruz, California High Speed Internet Access

These days, companies in Santa Cruz, California count on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.

In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly dependent on our access to the web.

The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What do you need? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? Will your Santa Cruz business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg Internet access point?

Internet Access: Defining the Company Need

Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the web? Are you hosting the data in Santa Cruz, California and distant places or offices rely on you?

What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime required? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs

Analyzing Assorted High-Speed Internet Solutions in Santa Cruz, California

Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. You will hear providers use terms like:

• Internet access at high-speeds
• Business Internet or commercial Internet
• We provide broadband cable modems
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet provider
• Gigabit Internet
• MPLS protocol
• Point to point data circuits
• Internet access circuits-5 Meg
• 10 megabyte Internet access
• Fifty-megabytes-Internet access circuits
• We provide 100-megabyte Internet access circuits
• Sip trunking experts
• Direct or dedicated Internet access
• … and so many more

… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.

Business Access: Surfing the net at Work

Companies in Santa Cruz need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the internet may be needed.

The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the internet at the same time.

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, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.

Do you routinely backup? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.

Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.

High-speed organization Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.

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. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.

Shared Cable Circuits V. Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in Santa Cruz, California

In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?

Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your company. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.

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 web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.

In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.

Backup With Santa Cruz High Speed Company Internet Circuits

Santa Cruz has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Consider redundant circuits.

We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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.

In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.

If you want to maximize redundancy in Santa Cruz please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Organization High-Speed Internet access?

Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The net is tremendous. Think about the following situations:

The phone service in your office relies on Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?

Your office is the main data point for various other offices

Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail company operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your locations, whether 2 or 2000, depend on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.

The phones in your office, which functions as a call center, relies entirely on voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

Your business is 100% dependent on the net to properly function. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Your representatives would also be unable to answer calls. You are essentially out of organization. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

Considering the Best Santa Cruz, California High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Company

It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a high-level summary:

Internet Access for Smaller Businesses

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The web circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Business with One Location

If you have a midsized company in Santa Cruz, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.

Mid-Sized Company with More than One Location: Access to the Internet

What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.

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

For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.

We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.

You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.