Reliable access to The web is the lifeblood of St. Cloud companies and their organization. Fast and reliable access to The web is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
In the coming months and years, we will become increasingly reliant on our access to the internet.
Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What is the right solution to meet your needs? Can a cable modem suffice? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Your St. Cloud company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Is Internet use limited to website surfing or emailing only? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in St. Cloud and remote sites rely on this.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The net. Choosing the correct broadband for your business requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
At any company in St. Cloud, Florida some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.
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.
Do you perform backups at your company? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? 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. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in St. Cloud, Florida that have been previously wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Consider whether your organization hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
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 organization. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied 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. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The Internet including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While fast access to The net is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. 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. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during company hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
In these scenarios, carriers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
St. Cloud has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in St. Cloud. 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 established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
While access to The Internet is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable Internet access. Think about the following situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire company 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. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are your other offices able to do any work? Can they take or process any orders at all? Disseminate needed information and data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your business. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems talk to yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Does your business completely rely on the net? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. You are now, essentially, out of company. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In review:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The net 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. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized business in St. Cloud. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. Multiple carriers would be great. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. 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. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your organization run as efficiently as possible.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. 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 must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create 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. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.