In today’s environment, companies in South Gate, California depend on reliable access to The web as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We will become increasingly reliant on Internet access as the months and years progress.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Does your South Gate, California business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. 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? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in South Gate.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to The Internet is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in South Gate, California, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, access to The web is required.
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. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you routinely backup? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed company access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in South Gate that have been previously 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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The Internet in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various sites?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The net is important. 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.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. 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. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during company hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your company only; no sharing. 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.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
Realistically, while some carriers in South Gate offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in South Gate, California please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The web is greater. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about phone call quality? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of organization 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. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Is work even possible at your other sites? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. 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 speak with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, 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?
What if your company could not function at all without the web? Maybe your organization relies on it completely. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are out of company. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your organization needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a wrap-up:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
If you have a midsized company in South Gate, California, you will need higher-speed Internet access. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The Internet circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your 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. Again, costs and availability vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Companies with different locations, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. They require redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. As always, 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. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We will 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.
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