In today’s environment, companies in Scottsdale, Arizona rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. All companies rely on reliable and quick access to The net. This is true irrespective of how large or small the company.
In the coming months and years, we are going to become increasingly reliant on our access to the web.
The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is everywhere. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Does your Scottsdale business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Perhaps the internet is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting data in Scottsdale, Arizona? Do remote sites rely upon you?
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your organization? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? Is uptime essential? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed access to the web is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
At most businesses including those in Scottsdale, some or all employees need access to The net. access to The net may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have many employees who need to use the net at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Do you backup information? 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.
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? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The Internet, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Scottsdale, Arizona 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 business.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. 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.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct business. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different sites?
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. 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. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your organization day. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
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. 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. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the internet.
Here, providers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
Circuits can go down in Scottsdale, Arizona even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first type exists when the same carrier gives you multiple circuits. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Scottsdale. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
It is true that access to The web costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Please consider these situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. It is possible that during normal organization hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Will you lose calls? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the center of your business. 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 sites whether you have two or two thousand. What if your circuit fails? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Process new orders? Share essential data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. 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 talk to yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Maybe your company depends entirely on the net. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your business is basically done with. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely rely on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. In review:
If your company is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The Internet circuit may suffice. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They 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.
You have a mid-sized Scottsdale, Arizona company; higher speed access to The web required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Availability and costs vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Companies with multiple places are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is extremely crucial to them. Multiple carriers would be great. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. 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. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company run as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. 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.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
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 are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.
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. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.