Today’s environment demands that companies in Taunton, Massachusetts have reliable Internet service in order to run their company. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
The use of the internet is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What do you need? Will a cable modem be adequate? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? What does your Taunton company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Your business must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Taunton, Massachusetts and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? How much uptime is essential to your organization? Prior to making any purchases, you must determine the answers to these questions.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Taunton, access to The web is needed for at least some employees. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or speak with clients.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. If you have many employees who need to use the web at the same time, you may do better with more.
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 company functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Does your organization regularly conduct backups? 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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
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. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. 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. Also, securing high-speed access to The web using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Your organization may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Is your main business office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
When data and programs are hosted centrally at one main site, people outside that location must gain access. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. 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 thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during company hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your business. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the web.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Taunton, Massachusetts even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. Diversity redundancy, as this is called, offers you more protection that you might realize. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Taunton, Massachusetts please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. 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.
Even though access to The Internet comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Please consider these situations:
Your organization is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During business 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 quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? Will they be full of static?
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your places. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 places. What if your circuit fails? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Are remote offices able to work at all? Process or take new orders? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Is an API utilized in your company so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? 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 organization completely rely on the net? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are out of company. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your carriers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You have several different options to pick from. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. In summary:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Taunton, need higher speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
Businesses with many locations face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Take a careful look at Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers and gigabit Internet providers. Research other high-speed access to The net circuit providers also and make an informed decision. The right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your company, you will benefit.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We are going to examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.