Obtaining High-Speed Access To The Web in South Bend, Indiana

Business Broadband, Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet: South Bend High Speed Internet Access

In today’s world, South Bend, Indiana companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their business. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.

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

The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What is the right solution to meet your requirements? Can a cable modem suffice? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your South Bend, Indiana business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?

Defining the Company Need for Internet Access

You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your company. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in South Bend.

What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How will the downtime affect your organization? Is uptime required? You must answer these questions before you buy.

Evaluating South Bend, Indiana High Speed Internet Solutions

In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed access to The Internet. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:

• High-speed access to The net provider
• Business Internet or commercial Internet
• broadband cable modems
• Metro Ethernet
• Gigabit Internet
• MPLS
• point-to-point circuits
• Five megabyte Internet access circuit
• Ten megabyte Internet access provided
• We provide access to The Internet circuits-50 Meg
• 100 Meg Internet access circuits
• Sip trunking providers
• dedicated Internet access
• … and so many 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 Internet for Website Surfing

For many, if not all, companies in South Bend, Indiana, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or speak with clients.

The best solution may rely upon how many employees you have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you have 50 employees who are using the web simultaneously, you may need more.

Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. However, 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 company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.

Depending on your location, high-speed business Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. These can usually be found in South Bend in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.

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. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Does your organization 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? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?

When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various places?

A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed access to The net is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.

Shared Cable Circuits V. Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in South Bend, Indiana

Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?

There are carriers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.

With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers

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.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Business Internet Circuits in South Bend, Indiana

Realistically, while some carriers in South Bend offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”

You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.

There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.

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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.

In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.

The providers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in South Bend, Indiana. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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 Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Company High-Speed Internet access?

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:

Your business telephone utilizes voice-over Internet Protocol, or VoIP as it is commonly known

Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what will happen to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.

Multiple places use your business as the central data point

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, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, rely on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Is work even possible at your other sites? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. 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 happens when there is a problem connecting 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 are a call center and you completely depend on VoIP

Is the internet integral to the proper function of your company? Do you rely on it entirely? No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now officially out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are your providers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?

The Correct High-Speed Company Access Circuits for Your South Bend, Indiana Company: How to Choose

You clearly have several choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. As a wrap-up:

Internet Access for Smaller Businesses

If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.

Internet Access for the Mid-Sized Business with One Location

If you have a midsized business in South Bend, Indiana, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 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.

Midsized Businesses with Multiple Locations: Internet Access

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of organization or offices. Redundant circuits are a necessity. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers before choosing the right one. The best mix of carriers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.

Larger corporate clients, enterprise clients and providers of services delivered via the Internet

Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. 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.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. It is essential to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.

Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. 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. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.