High-Speed Access to The Net in Somerville, Massachusetts

Somerville High Speed Access to The Internet: Metro Ethernet Access, Gigabit Internet and Company Broadband Internet

The lifeblood of Somerville, Massachusetts companies doing business in the current environment relies on reliable Internet access. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, rely on reliable and fast access to The net.

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

From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem enough? Do you need Metro Ethernet? You may need Gigabit Internet. Does your organization in Somerville need one of these: 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?

Access to the net: Determining Your Business’s Needs

Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the web only used for web surfing and email? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in Somerville that remote locations rely upon?

Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Will your business suffer from the lull? How much uptime is essential to your business? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.

Appraising Various High-Speed Internet Solutions in Somerville

Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the internet. Choosing the correct broadband internet for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:

• High-speed Internet access
• Business Internet or commercial Internet
• broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet
• GbE services or Gigabit Internet
• MPLS network
• Point to point data circuits
• Five megabyte Internet access
• We provide 10 Meg Internet access circuits
• We have fifty-megabyte Internet access circuits
• 100 Meg access to The web circuits
• Sip trunking providers
• dedicated 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: Surfing the web at Work

Workers for most companies in Somerville, Massachusetts have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the internet may be needed.

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. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.

Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemHowever, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.

Are you performing routine backups? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.

Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.

High-speed organization access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Somerville, Massachusetts. Providers have already wired these buildings. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.

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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or company premises? Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?

When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various locations?

For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.

Dedicated Bandwidth Versus Somerville, Massachusetts Shared Cable Circuits

There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?

Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your company. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.

For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.

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.

Somerville High Speed Business Internet Circuits: Redundancy

Somerville has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?

Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.

Redundancy basically comes in two forms.

With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. 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. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.

The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.

You should look for redundant circuits from carriers in Somerville, Massachusetts that do not have the same physical geographic pathways, in order to get the most redundancy. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in 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.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Organization High-Speed access to The Internet?

access to The Internet costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Contemplate these situations:

You use VoIP for your business telephone service

Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. 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 available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Are calls dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?

Multiple locations use your company as the central data point

You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. 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. If your circuit goes done, what will happen next? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share information? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? What happens when they are unable to connect to your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Your business is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. 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 providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company in Somerville

You clearly have many options. Your decision will be based on different factors including your organization needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:

If You Have a Small Organization That Needs Internet Access

A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The net circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. 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 business.

Internet Access-One Location- Medium Sized Business

Mid-sized businesses in Somerville, Massachusetts should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. 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. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.

Internet Access for the Medium Sized Company with Multiple Offices

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. They require redundant circuits. Different carriers are desirable. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. Your business can benefit from finding the right mix of services and carriers.

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

To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from 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.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.

Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We’ll formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your organization needs, while keeping it running smoothly.

Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.