The lifeblood of Wichita Falls companies doing business in the current environment relies on reliable access to The net. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
Our dependence on Internet access 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 net has a broad presence. What do you need? Can a cable modem suffice? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Does your business in Wichita Falls, Texas need one of these: 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The Internet point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Why will you need the web? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used to network with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Wichita Falls that remote places rely upon?
Have you thought about what will happen to your business if your high-speed Internet is interrupted by an outage? How will the downtime affect your business? Is uptime required? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Speaking broadly, all companies need high-speed access to the internet. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband. You will hear providers use terms like:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
At most businesses including those in Wichita Falls, some or all employees need access to The Internet. There are countless reasons to need access to the net. Perhaps it is to order materials, to conduct business research or speak with clients.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the internet at the same time, you may find that more is better.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, when they are frequently downloading documents, images and videos, that need for speed increases drastically.
Are you regularly performing backups? 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.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed business access to The web like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Wichita Falls, Texas that have already been wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Do you have your own company servers that run APIs, websites or feeds for offsite offices or companies? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Is your organization retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several sites?
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. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different sites, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed Internet access is important. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during organization hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your company only; no sharing. The full capacity of your circuit should be attainable during all hours regardless of neighboring buildings, people or offices.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
In these scenarios, providers deliver a large quantity of high-speed to a building. The quantity must be enough so that it can split the circuit and deliver to every tenant. Whatever amount has been guaranteed in each tenant’s contract is the amount they receive.
Realistically, while some carriers in Wichita Falls offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Try using redundant circuits.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. 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 there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. Using advanced routers and IP address allocations, you can bind these connections together so that, to your users and to the public, it appears and behaves as a single circuit. Truthfully, they are entirely separate. They are redundant and exist in case one of them fails. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. 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 Wichita Falls, Texas. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central sites. 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.
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. It is possible that during normal organization hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would it annoy you or destroy you? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote locations? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate essential files and data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What happens when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
Your organization is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. You are now officially out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
You clearly have many options. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your organization. Essentially:
If you are a small company, with one location and you do not worry about redundancy, one five meg, ten meg, or fifty meg Internet access circuit may very well be enough to meet your needs. Find out if you are in a lit building. If so, the price of Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be affordable. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
If you have a midsized business in Wichita Falls, you will need higher-speed Internet access. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You may be able to achieve this in a manner that will not break the bank. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Different providers are desirable. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. 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 Internet circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your organization running smoothly and efficiently.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do not risk having failing circuits or not enough bandwidth. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
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 will examine your current usage and demand levels then create a design that provides you with the resources you need to keep your organization running smoothly at a reasonable cost.
Please click here to complete the contact form on the right side of this page or call our office to schedule an appointment for an assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.