These days, companies in Green Bay, Wisconsin rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the coming months and years, we’ll become increasingly reliant on our access to the web.
The Internet is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video chat, the web is everywhere. What do you need? Will a cable modem be adequate? Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? 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 Green Bay, Wisconsin?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the internet only used for web surfing and email? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? Are you hosting data in Green Bay? Do remote places rely upon you?
What happens to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to The net is required by all businesses. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
At any company in Green Bay, Wisconsin some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just some of the ways the internet may be needed.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If your business has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Do you routinely backup? 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? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Organization high-speed access to The net may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have options such as gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Green Bay, Wisconsin that have been previously wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. 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 organization headquarters with a hosted application connected to fifty or more satellite offices? Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. Are you choosing an intranet solution that is sufficiently reliable and stable to support multiple simultaneous connections from varied locations?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a organization with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed access to The net is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during business hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. 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. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the internet.
Here, providers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by carriers in Green Bay, circuits do go down. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first type is when one single carrier provides you with multiple circuits. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. 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. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Green Bay. 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. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The web. Consider the following:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. 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 the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What will happen to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will you lose calls? Perhaps you will sound choppy or will be inaudible.
Your office may be the working center of an entire organization enterprise. The kind of business does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, depend on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Do you know what your organization needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software business is running. 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. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
What if your organization could not function at all without the web? Maybe your business relies on it completely. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Looks like you are now out of company. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have many options. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. As a high-level summary:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business 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. 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 company in Green Bay, you will need higher-speed Internet access. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may not be as costly as you first thought. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Availability and costs vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Multiple carriers would be great. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Here also, examine the Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet providers. Take a careful look at other high-speed access to The Internet circuit providers before choosing the right one. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your business run as efficiently as possible.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
Your company faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We will formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We are going to create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
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