Today’s environment demands that companies in Shawnee, Kansas have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. The organization functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, count on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the net is omnipresent. What do you need? Will a cable modem be adequate? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may be required. Will your Shawnee 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 company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is real time data connection with cloud servers essential to your business? Are you hosting the data in Shawnee, Kansas and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? How much uptime is essential to your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The web. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… focus on what matters: what does your business need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At any company in Shawnee some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. 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. If you have 50 employees who are using the net simultaneously, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Does your company regularly conduct backups? 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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Shawnee, Kansas that have been previously wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. 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 business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office places?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The net 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. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. 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. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your business. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Shawnee, Kansas even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
The answer is redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better 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 carriers that have different pathway in Shawnee. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. 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 Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Think about the following situations:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Will calls be cut-off? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office may be the working center of an entire business enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your organization requires. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and hundreds of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Does your business completely rely on the internet? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. You are essentially out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have several choices. The needs and budget of your organization will both affect your choices. In review:
If your organization 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 web circuit may suffice. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your company.
If you have a midsized organization in Shawnee, Kansas, you will need higher-speed access to The web. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. 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.
Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. Varied providers are optimal. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The net circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.