Today’s environment demands that companies in Spartanburg have reliable Internet service in order to run their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
We’ll, in the months and years ahead, become more and more reliant on our access to The net.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video chat and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. You may need Gigabit Internet. What is best for your company in Spartanburg? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Is real time data connection with cloud servers essential to your organization? Are you hosting data in Spartanburg, South Carolina? Do remote sites depend upon you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? You must answer these questions before you buy.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The web. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. Many service providers toss out terms such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
Workers for most companies in Spartanburg, South Carolina have some need to access the web during the course of their job. The web is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up business information speak with third parties.
The best solution may depend upon how many employees you have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The Internet if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Do you perform backups at your company? Simultaneous connections to the web, which you need in order to sync your backup data, require support. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which you definitely should, this will be important.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or business premises? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different locations?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct business. If the internet 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 places?
For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. 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. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
There are carriers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your business out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Spartanburg, South Carolina has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in your circuits. 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Spartanburg. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different 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.
The cost of dependable access to The web pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Contemplate these scenarios:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. It is possible that during normal business 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 accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will the calls be choppy?
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. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your 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 rates or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their organization elsewhere?
Maybe your business depends entirely on the web. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. You are essentially out of company. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your organization needs and your budget. Essentially:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices 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 business.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Spartanburg, 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. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed Internet access circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of providers and services for your organization, you will benefit.
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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
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. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.