The lifeblood of Terre Haute, Indiana companies doing business in the current environment relies on reliable Internet access. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small company or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends upon fast and reliable access to The Internet.
Our dependence on access to The Internet will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
Our uses of the internet 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 sufficient? Metro Ethernet may be the thing you need. Gigabit Internet? Does your Terre Haute, Indiana company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is real time data connection with cloud servers essential to your organization? There may be remote places that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Terre Haute, Indiana.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How might the downtime cause problems for your organization? Is uptime required? You must answer questions like these so you can make a purchase that actually meets your needs
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At any company in Terre Haute, Indiana some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is to talk to shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 your company has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Are you performing backups? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed company Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Terre Haute, Indiana that have already been wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite 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.
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. 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.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Realistically, while some carriers in Terre Haute offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
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 your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. 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. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Terre Haute have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. 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 Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The Internet. Consider these scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization 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. All of your places, 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 happens if your circuit goes down? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Process or take new orders? Circulate necessary data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. 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 talk to yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your business is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Your business is basically done with. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller access to The web circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Metro Ethernet service or gigabit service may also be a reasonably priced option if you are in a lit building. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You have a mid-sized Terre Haute company; higher speed Internet access required. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. Having several providers would afford extra protection. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.
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