In today’s environment, companies in Stamford depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small organization or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends on fast and reliable Internet access.
We will become increasingly dependent on Internet access as the months and years progress.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the net is everywhere. What can best meet your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? What is best for your company in Stamford, Connecticut? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your business, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? You may be hosting the data in Stamford and remote places rely on this.
What happens to your business if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Before buying, these are a few of the questions you need to answer.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. Deciding on the right broadband internet is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Stamford, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct company research or talk to clients.
The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the net during the same hours.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. If your business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
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? 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. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
High-speed organization access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Stamford, Connecticut that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. 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.
Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? 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? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. 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 locations?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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 companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within 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 business hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
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. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Stamford, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. 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 providers with different physical geographic pathways in Stamford. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. 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.
The cost of dependable access to The Internet pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Think about the following situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your 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 available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about phone call quality? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your organization. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your business is 100% dependent on the internet to properly function. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. Looks like you are now out of company. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Can you truly rely on your carriers? Are they as dependable as they claim? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. Essentially:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small organization, 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. 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 company.
Having a medium or mid-sized company in Stamford requires that you have higher-speed access to the 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, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Availability and costs 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. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company 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 absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this 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.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will 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.
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