The Net in Skokie: High-Speed Access

High Speed Internet access in Skokie: Company Broadband, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet Access

In today’s environment, companies in Skokie, Illinois depend on reliable access to The net as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies rely on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true regardless how large or small the company.

Our reliance on access to the web will become greater in the near and distant future.

The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the net is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Skokie, Illinois?

Internet Access: Defining the Business Need

Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is real time data connection with cloud servers important to your company? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Skokie, Illinois.

How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? How much downtime can your business withstand? Is uptime essential? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.

Evaluating Different High-Speed Internet Solutions in Skokie

Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. Choosing the correct broadband for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. While various providers will throw around terminology like:

• High-speed Internet access
• Corporate Internet
• What about broadband cable modems?
• Metro Ethernet service
• GbE or Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS service provider
• Services related to point-to-point circuits
• 5-megabyte access circuits
• 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• Internet access-50 Meg
• Internet access circuits- One hundred megabytes
• We provide sip trunks
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and much more

… focus on what matters: what does your organization need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?

Surfing the Web at Work: Organization Internet Access

At most businesses including those in Skokie, Illinois, some or all employees need Internet access. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or communicate with clients.

Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. 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.

You may not need as much high-speed access to The net if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.

Do you backup information? 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.

Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.

Business high-speed Internet access may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.

Online Applications Need High-Speed Internet access

Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?

Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from 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. It is advisable that high-speed access to The Internet be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.

Shared Cable Circuits in Skokie Versus Dedicated Internet Bandwidth

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 hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. 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. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?

You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.

Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

In these cases, the carriers 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.

Redundancy With Skokie High Speed Company Internet Circuits

Realistically, while some providers in Skokie, Illinois offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?

The answer is redundant circuits.

We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.

With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.

In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different providers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.

If you want to maximize redundancy in Skokie, Illinois please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. 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 is the Cost of Not Having Adequate Protection for Your Organization Class High-Speed access to The net?

The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Please consider these situations:

You use VoIP for your organization telephone service

Your business is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about the quality of your calls? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?

Your company is the central data point for multiple locations

Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail organization operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your sites, whether 2 or 2000, rely on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other locations? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share information? 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. You may operate a service like this: other systems communicate with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?

Your organization call center utilizes voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

Maybe your organization depends entirely on the net. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.

Considering the Best Skokie, Illinois High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company

Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. To recap:

Small Business Internet Access

If you are a small organization, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg access to The Internet circuit may be adequate. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. 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 for the Mid-Sized Organization with One Location

You have a midsized company in Skokie; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred 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.

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

If your company has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your business.

Larger corporations, enterprising clients and clients who provide services that are delivered via the Internet

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. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.

Internet Need Demand Analysis Provided Free of Charge

The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware 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’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.

If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.