The Internet in West Palm Beach, Florida: High-Speed Access

Accessing High Speed Internet in West Palm Beach: Gigabit Internet, Business Broadband and Metro Ethernet Access

The lifeblood of West Palm Beach, Florida companies doing business in the current environment depends upon reliable Internet access. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for companies to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.

Our dependence on access to The Internet will continue to grow in the coming months and years.

Our uses of the net reach far and wide. From data sharing, video calls, and shopping to VOIP and email, the internet has a broad presence. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. You may need Gigabit Internet. Will your West Palm Beach organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?

Access to the net: Determining Your Business’s Needs

Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting the data in West Palm Beach and distant sites or offices rely on you?

What will happen to your company if your high-speed Internet experiences an outage? How much downtime can your company withstand? Is your success dependent on uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.

High-Speed Internet in West Palm Beach: Explaining Different Solutions

High-speed access to The web is required by all businesses. When choosing the right broadband for company, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Many service providers toss out terms such as:

• High-speed Internet access provider
• Business Internet service provider
• Broadband cable modems are our specialty
• Metropolitan-area Ethernet
• Gigabit Ethernet
• MPLS
• Point-to-point circuit protocol
• Five megabyte access to The net circuit
• 10 megabyte Internet access
• Internet access-50 Meg
• One hundred Meg Internet access circuits provided
• Leading SIP trunk authority
• dedicated Internet access
• … and then some

… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.

Business Internet access for Web Surfing

Most companies in West Palm Beach require that some or all of their workers have access to the web. Whether it is for company research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.

The number of workers you employ, may be the most important factor in your decision making process. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, 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? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.

Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.

Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed company access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in West Palm Beach. Carriers have already wired these buildings. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.

While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. In fact, obtaining high-speed Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.

Internet-based Applications That Need Access to High-Speed Internet

Does your organization host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Is your company 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 net connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?

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. It is advisable that high-speed access to The web be available at the central business office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.

Dedicated Internet Bandwidth in West Palm Beach, Florida V. Shared Cable Circuits

In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. 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 organization hours? Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?

There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.

You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. In your office out to the net you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit 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.

Redundant High Speed Organization Internet Circuits in West Palm Beach, Florida

Circuits can go down in West Palm Beach, Florida even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?

Redundant circuits.

Redundancy basically comes in two forms.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.

Bringing in circuits using two distinct carriers is the second form of circuit redundancy. 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. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.

The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in West Palm Beach. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. If a major accident occurs or there is a fire that impedes the function of circuits in a particular region, you have redundancy in a different direction.

What Will Not Having Enough Protection for Your Business Class High Speed Internet Cost You?

While Internet access is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable Internet access. Contemplate these situations:

Does your business rely on Voice-over Internet Protocol for telephone service?

Is your business on a cable modem? How many other tenants is your carrier servicing in your building? Are 14 other offices getting circuits? During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What about the quality of your calls? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will they be full of static?

Your office is the main data point for various other offices

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. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Is it simply an irritation or a catastrophe? Are remote offices able to work at all? Process or take new orders? Share essential information with anyone? Choosing the right solution depends largely on assessing and understanding the specific needs of your business. Perhaps you are a software company, running a hosted solution used by hundreds of customers. Perhaps you operate a service where other systems speak with yours via an API to calculate freight prices, commodity prices, collect current weather data or receive any other information that you serve up. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?

Your company call center utilizes voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP)

What if your business could not function at all without the net? Maybe your business relies on it completely. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. In addition, they will be unable to answer incoming calls. Your business is basically done with. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Make sure your carriers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?

Picking the Right High-Speed Business Access Circuits for Your Company in West Palm Beach

Clearly, there are many choices. Your company needs and your budget will have to come into consideration when deciding on your solutions. As a wrap-up:

Internet Access for the Small Business Owner

If you are a small company, with just one location and not concerned about redundancy, a single five meg, 10 meg or 50 meg Internet access circuit may be adequate. 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. Because prices can vary based on the location of your company and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.

Internet Access-One Location- Medium Sized Business

You have a mid-sized West Palm Beach, Florida company; higher speed access to The net required. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred 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.

Midsized Businesses with Multiple Sites: Internet Access

The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of business or offices. Redundancy is crucial. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right mix of providers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.

Providers of services that rely on the net for their delivery, big corporate clients and enterprise customers

If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from 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.

Free Internet Demand and Need Analysis

Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. You must select the single circuit or multiple circuits that can meet your demands and stay within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.

Our engineers can help. We will analyze your requirements and 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 will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your company needs, while keeping it running smoothly.

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. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.