High-Speed Access to The Net in Seattle, Washington

Seattle High Speed Access to The Web: Metro Ethernet Access, Gigabit Internet and Business Broadband Internet

The lifeblood of Seattle, Washington companies doing organization in the current environment relies on reliable access to The net. Fast and reliable access to The Internet is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.

Our dependence on access to The web will continue to grow in the coming months and years.

From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the Internet is ubiquitous. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. What does your Seattle, Washington company need? Does it require 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 100 Meg access to The net point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?

Defining the Company Need for Internet Access

Your organization must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? Do remote places rely on you hosting the data in Seattle, Washington?

What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

Analyzing Assorted High-Speed Internet Solutions in Seattle, Washington

In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. While various providers will throw around terminology like:

• High-speed Internet access
• Provider of Internet for Businesses
• What about broadband cable modems?
• Metro Ethernet experts
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS services
• Services related to point-to-point circuits
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• 10 megabyte Internet access
• 50 Meg access to The web circuits
• 100 Meg access to The web circuits
• Leading SIP trunk authority
• Dedicated or “specific” Internet access
• … and more

… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?

Business access to The web for Surfing the Worldwide Web

For many, if not all, companies in Seattle, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the internet may be needed.

The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the net at the same time.

Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.

Are you performing 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.

Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Seattle that are already wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

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. 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.

High-Speed access to The Internet Required for Hosting Applications

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? Maybe your business requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have 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. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.

Shared Cable Circuits in Seattle, Washington Versus Dedicated Internet Bandwidth

There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during company hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?

Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.

You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

Here, carriers 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.

Redundant High Speed Organization Internet in Seattle, Washington: Why More Circuits?

The truth is that circuits can go down in Seattle, Washington even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”

Try using redundant circuits.

Redundancy basically comes in two forms.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.

The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. 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.

The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Seattle. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain 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. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.

What Cost Awaits if you do Not Have Enough High-Speed access to The Internet Protection for Your Organization?

Although access to The web comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please think about the following scenarios:

Your business relies on VoIP for its telephone service

Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?

Maybe your organization acts as a data center for various other locations

Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, rely on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. 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. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their business elsewhere?

You have a large call center that is completely dependent on voice over Internet protocol

Is the web integral to the proper function of your company? Do you count on it entirely? No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. No calls could be answered either. You are now, essentially, out of business. 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. Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?

In Seattle, Washington: Selecting the Proper High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your Company

You have several different options to pick from. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. As a high-level summary:

Internet Access and the Small Business

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The web circuit may be adequate 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. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Internet Access-One Location- Medium Sized Business

If you have a midsized business in Seattle, Washington, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.

Mid-Sized Businesses access to The net – Multiple Locations

Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits are essential. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The web circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.

Bigger corporations, enterprise companies and providers of services that are delivered using Internet

If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. In order to maximize and protect your uptime, you must have redundancy. You should have redundant circuits from multiple carriers in addition to redundant hardware. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no 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.

You Can Get a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!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.

Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.