Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Texarkana, Texas companies and their company. All companies depend on reliable and quick access to The web. This is true irrespective of how large or small the business.
We are going to become increasingly reliant on Internet access as the months and years progress.
From video chat to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What solution bet fits your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Your Texarkana, Texas business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The web, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Perhaps the web is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is real time data connection with cloud servers crucial to your company? You may be hosting the data in Texarkana and remote sites rely on this.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
At any company in Texarkana, Texas some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have 50 employees who are using the net simultaneously, you may need more.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. When employees are often downloading images, videos and documents, however, the need for speed increases significantly.
Does your company 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.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. 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.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Are your organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? 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. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. 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 places?
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The Internet is important. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to 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 speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Texarkana, circuits do go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater 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.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Texarkana, Texas. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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.
Although access to The Internet comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Think about the following situations:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants 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. How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will they be full of static?
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 company. Every single one of your offices, stores and places rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other places? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate necessary data? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your business. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. 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 prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your organization servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their business elsewhere?
Is the web integral to the proper function of your business? Do you count on it entirely? Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. No calls could be answered either. Looks like you are now out of organization. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have many options. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a wrap-up:
If you are a small organization, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
You have a midsized company in Texarkana, Texas; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Optimally, multiple providers 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. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. They need redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. Have you looked at Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers? You should do so before making a decision. Your company can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed 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.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Choosing the right combination of hardware and circuits can be complicated and confusing.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running 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. Assessments are done in as few as two days or within 48 hours.