The lifeblood of Utica companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick access to The Internet.
Internet access will become increasingly important to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The web will only grow as time goes on.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What can best meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your organization in Utica need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The net point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Your company must assess its real needs. This must be done before an appropriate service can be chosen. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Do remote places depend on you hosting the data in Utica, New York?
Have you thought about what will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? Can your business afford the downtime? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? You must answer these questions before you buy.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the web. Choosing the correct broadband for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers like to spout technical 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 Utica some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. There are countless reasons to need access to the internet. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct organization research or speak with clients.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the web at the same time, you may find that more is better.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Do you perform backups at your company? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
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 business Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Utica that have already been wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that 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.
Do you have your own organization servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Maybe your organization requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? 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. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. For headquarters, Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed Internet dedicated circuits is advisable. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. 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. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. 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 case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. 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.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Utica even though some carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits may be the answer for you.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. 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. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Utica. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Please think about the following scenarios:
Your company is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During business hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available for your requirements. What happens to your phone calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will you lose calls? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the center of your organization. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What happens if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they process transactions or new orders? Share information? Do you know what your company needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. You might have hundreds and hundreds of loyal customers. Perhaps you are a software company running a hosted solution they all rely on. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to communicate with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping prices or other information. You may find that they are unable to reach or connect with your business servers. How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Your organization is 100% dependent on the net to properly function. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. No calls could be answered either. Your organization is basically done with. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. Essentially:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg access to The web circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. 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. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You have a mid-sized Utica, New York company; higher speed Internet access required. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Ideally, you want to have the greatest redundancy. You can achieve this by using multiple circuits from different carriers. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Your company can benefit from finding the right mix of services and providers.
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. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is essential to ensuring uptime. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your organization. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Both your hardware and circuits must be capable of supporting a vast number of simultaneous and fast connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!You want your business to run smoothly. We will look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. We can often provide assessments within 48 hours.