The lifeblood of Schenectady companies doing business in the current environment depends on reliable Internet access. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.
access to The net will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The Internet will only grow as time goes on.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? What is best for your business in Schenectady, New York? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
The needs of your particular business must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? Are you hosting data in Schenectady, New York? Do remote locations rely upon you?
Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Can your business afford the downtime? Is uptime required? Before making a purchase, these are some of the questions that you must answer.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
Most companies in Schenectady require that some or all of their workers have access to the internet. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or communicate with clients.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Are you performing routine backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
High-speed business access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Schenectady that are already wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The Internet may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the net with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several locations?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets 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.
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 is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. 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 case, your company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. 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.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
In these cases, the providers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Schenectady, problems arise and circuits can fail. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Schenectady that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable Internet access. Consider these scenarios:
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 the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office is the center of your organization. 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 locations whether you have two or two thousand. Your circuit goes down, now what happens? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How long will your customers tolerate repeated outages?
Is the net integral to the proper function of your company? Do you depend on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. They are also unable to answer calls. Basically, you are out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not vital to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be adequate. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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 Schenectady, New York requires that you have higher-speed access to the net. Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet and other higher speed Internet circuits are options to consider. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. 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. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
If your business has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. 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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
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. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.