Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Wheeling, Illinois companies and their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
We’ll become increasingly reliant on Internet access as the months and years progress.
The Internet is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the net is everywhere. How can your needs be met? Can a cable modem suffice? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Your Wheeling organization probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point but which one is best?
You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Is the net only used for web surfing and email? Is connecting with cloud servers and sharing real time data the main use of the net? Do remote locations depend on you hosting the data in Wheeling?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How might the downtime cause problems for your company? Is uptime essential to the success of your company? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Wheeling, Illinois, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information communicate with third parties.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. If you only have a few workers, you may be fine with a smaller Internet circuit such as a 5 or 10 megabyte. If you have 50 employees who are using the internet simultaneously, you may need more.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Do you backup information? 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.
Are you using a service such as DropBox or Google drive to share files? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched with other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The Internet, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Wheeling, Illinois that have already been wired by a carrier. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. In fact, obtaining high-speed access to The Internet with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less depending upon availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Is your business 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. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. That bandwidth reaches out like branches to every building in the community and the people living and working in those buildings. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
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 carriers in Wheeling, circuits do go down. In what way can you diminish the risk of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same 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. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different providers to bring in and establish your circuits. By using IP address allocations and certain routers, you can bind your connections. By doing this, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Wheeling, Illinois. 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. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.
access to The net costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Consider these scenarios:
If your business utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are organization that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about the quality of your calls? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will they be full of static?
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. Your primary Internet connection is solely responsible for smoothly granting access and sending data to all of your sites whether you have two or two thousand. Your circuit goes down, now what will happen? Would it annoy you or destroy you? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote sites? What about new orders? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is 100% dependent on the web to properly function. If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. You are now, essentially, out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are the providers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have many options. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. To recap:
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. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your organization.
You have a midsized company in Wheeling, Illinois; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The Internet circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Availability and costs vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of organization or offices. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. As always, 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 best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
Companies such as these require the following: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and point-to-point (PPP) high-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your demand and budget constraints should both be considered when you decide what circuit or combination of circuits you must have. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We are going to then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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