High-Speed Access to The Web in St. Petersburg, Florida

Accessing High Speed Internet in St. Petersburg, Florida: Gigabit Internet, Organization Broadband and Metro Ethernet Access

Today’s environment demands that companies in St. Petersburg, Florida have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fast and reliable access to The web is needed for companies 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 web reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the web has a broad presence. What do you need? Will a cable modem be adequate? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Your St. Petersburg company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?

Determining your Company Need for Internet Access

Prior to selecting a service, your company must figure out its needs. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? You may be hosting the data in St. Petersburg and remote locations rely on this.

What if you have a disruption in your high-speed Internet? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

Looking at Different High Speed Internet Solutions: St. Petersburg, Florida

High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:

• High-speed access to the Internet
• Business Internet or commercial Internet
• Broadband cable modem services
• Metro Ethernet service provider
• Provider of Gigabit Internet service
• MPLS network
• Point-to-point circuit protocol
• Internet access circuits-five megabyte
• Internet access circuits-10 Meg
• 50 Meg Internet access circuits
• Internet access circuits- One hundred Meg
• We provide sip trunks
• Internet access dedicated to you and only you
• … and then some

… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.

Business access to The net for Website Surfing

For most companies in St. Petersburg, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. Third party applications, company research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the net may be needed.

The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the internet at the same time.

Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.

Are you performing routine backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.

Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.

Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in St. Petersburg, Florida that have already been wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.

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 Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.

Web Applications: They Require High-Speed Internet Access

Do you have your own organization servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.

If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?

If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Shared Cable Circuits V. Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in St. Petersburg

Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come 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. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?

There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.

You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.

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 Company Internet Circuits in St. Petersburg, Florida

You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in St. Petersburg, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?

Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.

Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.

The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. You get some protection, but also some risk.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple providers or circuits. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.

For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in St. Petersburg. 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. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.

What Cost Awaits if you do Not Have Enough High-Speed Internet access Protection for Your Organization?

The cost of dependable access to The Internet pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:

The phone service in your office relies on Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

If your organization utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. During company hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.

Your office is the main data point for various other offices

Your office may be the working center of an entire business enterprise. The kind of company 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 sites, 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 will happen if your circuit crashes? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential information with anyone? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all depend on. You may operate a service like this: other systems communicate with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. It is possible they will not be able to connect 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 call center dependent on VoIP

Your company is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Basically, you are out of business. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?

The Correct High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your St. Petersburg, Florida Company: How to Choose

It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your company needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To summarize:

If You Have a Small Organization That Needs Internet Access

Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Mid-Sized Company Internet access: One Location

You have a midsized company in St. Petersburg, Florida; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.

Mid-Sized Company with More than One Location: Access to the Internet

If your business has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.

Bigger corporations, enterprise companies and providers of services that are delivered using Internet

Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.

Receive a Free Internet Need and Demand Analysis

The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your 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 can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.

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. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.