In today’s environment, companies in Sterling Heights, Michigan count on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their business. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The Internet.
access to The web will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
Our uses of the internet reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the net has a broad presence. What is the best fix to meet your requirements? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your Sterling Heights, Michigan organization need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Sterling Heights, Michigan that remote places depend upon?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your company withstand? Does your business require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
At any company in Sterling Heights some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the net may be needed.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you performing backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed business Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Providers have already wired these buildings. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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 company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? 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 organization. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a 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. Cable operators are only permitted to establish a certain amount of bandwidth within communities. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. 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?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some providers offer. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
For example, with Metro Ethernet, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in increments of five Meg circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 50 Meg circuits and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the net.
In these scenarios, providers 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.
Realistically, while some providers in Sterling Heights 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.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. 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. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Sterling Heights have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. 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 dropped? Will you sound muffled?
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. 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 if your circuit fails? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your organization requires. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all count on. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Maybe your organization depends entirely on the net. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of company. Is redundancy enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. In review:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single access to The Internet 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. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a mid-sized Sterling Heights company; higher speed access to The web required. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different providers. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed Internet access circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. 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. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. 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. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.