The lifeblood of White Plains companies doing company in the current environment depends upon reliable access to The net. Fortune 500 companies to small companies and everything in between, depend on reliable and fast Internet access.
access to The Internet will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the net is omnipresent. What is the best solution for you? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What is best for your organization in White Plains, New York? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your company, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the net? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the web? You may be hosting the data in White Plains and remote sites rely on this.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How much downtime can your company withstand? Does your business require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed access to the internet is something all companies need. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. You will hear providers use terms like:
… be sure not to forget what capability and technical solutions meet your business’s specific needs.
For most companies in White Plains, New York, some or all of the employees need access to the web. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your organization if you only have a few people working for you. If you have more than that, you may need more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you regularly performing backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? 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.
You may consider high-speed organization access to The Internet if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in White Plains, New York 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.
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 Internet access with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet in 30 days or less.
Does your business host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Is your organization 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 things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. 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.
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. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working 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 company receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
Here, carriers 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.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in White Plains, New York, problems arise and circuits can fail. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. 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. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different carriers that have different pathway in White Plains, New York. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
Although access to The Internet comes at a price, the price of unreliable Internet access is tremendous. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your business is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will they be full of static?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your business. Whether you have 2 sites, 250, or 2000, they all rely on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Dispense and receive data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to talk to yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their business elsewhere?
Your company is entirely Internet based. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now officially out of business. Is redundancy enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
You clearly have many options. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. In summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid sized companies with a single office in White Plains, need higher speed Internet access. 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. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. For instance, it may be cheaper to utilize two 50 meg circuits in place of one 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your organization.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We’ll examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your company running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.