The lifeblood of Toledo companies doing organization in the current environment relies on reliable access to The net. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the internet.
From email to data sharing, video chat to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the Internet is ubiquitous. What is the best solution for you? A cable modem may be satisfactory. It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. What is best for your business in Toledo? Will your business needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the internet? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? You may be hosting the data in Toledo, Ohio and remote locations rely on this.
What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? How much downtime can your organization withstand? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your business is imperative. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Companies in Toledo, Ohio need access to the net for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. Third party applications, business research or development and e-commerce are just several of the ways the internet may be needed.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. A five or ten megabyte Internet circuit may be all you need if employ a small workforce. If you have more than that, 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. 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 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.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed organization Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Toledo that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a 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.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Are your business headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Is your organization 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. If the internet 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 locations?
For one office or a small company with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. For the headquarters, high-speed access to The Internet including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Want to reach gigabit speeds? You can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the providers 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.
While certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products in Toledo, Ohio, the reality is that it is possible for a circuit to go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
When considering redundant circuits and carriers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Toledo 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. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. 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. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. Your primary Internet connection is responsible for granting access to data to all of your sites. This is true whether you have 3 locations or 2000 places. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are remote offices able to work at all? What will happen to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Dispense and receive 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 operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your company servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your business is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. They are also unable to answer calls. You are essentially out of business. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your business needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. To summarize:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small organization with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single Internet access circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
If you have a midsized business in Toledo, Ohio, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. You need to speak with one of our experts to determine your options in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is extremely vital to them. Different carriers are desirable. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The net circuit providers before choosing the right one. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your company up and running as efficiently as possible.
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. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be sufficient to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your organization needs. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we will generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
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