In today’s world, Titusville companies need dependable Internet access. It is the lifeblood of their business. Fast and reliable access to The Internet is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
Our dependence on access to The Internet will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What do you need? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? You may need Gigabit Internet. A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point: what is right for your company in Titusville, Florida?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your organization. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Do remote places rely on you hosting the data in Titusville, Florida?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? How will the downtime affect your organization? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. When choosing the right broadband internet for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
At most businesses including those in Titusville, Florida, some or all employees need Internet access. There are countless reasons to need access to the web. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or speak with clients.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need 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. If your company 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? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
High-speed company access to The net like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in Titusville, Florida in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office sites?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. Those people are not able to do their work if the web connection fails or is unreliable. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The web such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. 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?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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 net.
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.
Circuits can go down in Titusville even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Try using redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better 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 Titusville. Essentially, this just means that you do not want both of your circuits to enter the building on the same side. They should come in on different sides. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your organization is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. Between 9 and 5, any of those other offices could be downloading huge files, streaming video or taking large volume of phone calls and more. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your needs. What happens to your phone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled?
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 business. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What about new orders? Disseminate needed information and data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your business requires. Maybe you are a corporation that designs and sells software and you run a hosted solution that is used by hundreds and 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 they are unable to connect to your servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are now, essentially, out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it 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 service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. As a wrap-up:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small company with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
You have a midsized company in Titusville; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Again, costs and availability vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. Here too, 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 best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
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. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. 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. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.