Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of West Des Moines companies and their organization. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The net.
We will become increasingly dependent on Internet access as the months and years progress.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet? Your West Des Moines business probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The web point but which one is best?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the internet? You may be hosting the data in West Des Moines and remote sites rely on this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Can your business afford the downtime? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in West Des Moines, Iowa, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The best solution may rely upon how many employees you have. 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.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Do you perform backups at your company? 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.
Google drive and DropBox are two popular sharing services. Are you using one of these or some other service that allows you to share files? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized 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 organization location may cause you to think about high-speed organization access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. “Lit buildings” that have already been wired by a carrier, are commonly the site for these. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
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. Depending on availability, it is often possible to obtain high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Your business may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. People can’t work if you have no Internet connection. 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 sites?
For one office or a small organization with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. 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 probably not be enough.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your business. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
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.
In these situations, each tenant receives their contracted high-speed. The carrier delivers enough so they can split their circuit and provide enough to each tenant.
West Des Moines has some providers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. 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. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different providers, offers far better protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in West Des Moines 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. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. 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.
Although access to The web comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Consider these scenarios:
You are on a cable modem with the carrier providing circuits to 14 other tenants in your building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are business that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Inaudible (choppy) to your customers?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail business operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, rely on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens in the event of a circuit failure? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are remote offices able to work at all? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential information with anyone? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular business. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Is an API utilized in your organization so that your customers can access and speak with your system? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
What if your company could not function at all without the web? Maybe your organization depends upon it completely. Should your circuits stop working, imagine your people being unable to make any outbound phone calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. You are now, essentially, out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your business. Essentially:
If your company is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The net circuit may suffice. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
Mid-sized businesses in West Des Moines, Iowa should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The web circuits. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed access to The web circuit providers. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the 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. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your company. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
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. We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We’ll then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run company.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.