These days, companies in Tucson, Arizona rely on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small organization or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the web.
The net is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the internet is everywhere. What is the right solution for your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. You may need Gigabit Internet. Does your company in Tucson need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the web? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? You may be hosting the data in Tucson and remote sites rely on this.
Have you thought about what happens to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the net. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your business. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear providers throw out words and phrases like:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in Tucson, Arizona, some or all of the employees need access to the internet. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information speak with third parties.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to 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 your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you performing backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Tucson. Providers have already wired these buildings. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed access to The net may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various places?
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be adequate. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
Some providers offer customers dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, your bandwidth is not shared but is fully allocated to your business. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Tucson, Arizona, circuits do go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different 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. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. 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.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in Tucson. 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 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. 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.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Contemplate these situations:
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. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Will you lose calls? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Is work even possible at your other sites? What about new orders? Share essential data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. 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 talk to your system? What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
Your company is completely dependent on the web. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Basically, you are out of company. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your choices will largely count on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. As a wrap-up:
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 access to The web circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid-sized businesses in Tucson should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg 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.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without 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.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. 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.
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.