In today’s environment, companies in Wilmington rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and everything in between, count on reliable and fast Internet access.
Internet access will become increasingly important to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on access to The Internet will only grow as time goes on.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is everywhere you look. What do you need? Is a cable modem sufficient? It could be that you need Metro Ethernet. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The net point: what is right for your business in Wilmington?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your organization must assess its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Wilmington, Delaware that remote sites rely upon?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your organization? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is uptime essential? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your organization. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… 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.
Most companies in Wilmington require that some or all of their workers have access to the internet. Whether it is to communicate with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. You may need more if you have more workers and those workers all need to be on the web during the same hours.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Does your business regularly conduct 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.
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? This is how a file sharing service works: You save a file. Then the file is pushed to the cloud, and is then synchronized with other people’s computers. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
Depending on your location, high-speed organization Internet access, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Wilmington, Delaware. Carriers have already wired these buildings. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Consider whether your company hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
If you host programs, data or information centrally, people outside of the central location need to have access. If your Internet connection goes down, those people are unable to work. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different locations, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. During peak hours, your connection may slow down, even though you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty-megabyte connection. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. 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?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your organization only; no sharing. 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. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
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 Wilmington, Delaware offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. If there is a problem with a line or a port in your router, circuit redundancy can offer some protection. Damage to an external wire or part can cause the failure of all of your circuits. A regional outage experienced by your carrier can have the same result. This offers some protection and assurance but does not eliminate all threats.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Wilmington, Delaware. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would attached to the proper outside source whether a subterranean conduit or a telephone pole. They would be set up in different directions and would lead to different data centers or main office spaces. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable access to The net will be far greater than you may realize. Consider the following:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Are calls lost or dropped? 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. Whether you have 2 places, 250, or 2000, they all count on your primary Internet connection to retrieve data and information. What if your circuit fails? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Does your company completely rely on the web? If your circuits go down, you cannot make calls. They are also unable to answer calls. Basically, you are done. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using carriers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of your calls consistently and reliably clear?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. Essentially:
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 access to The Internet circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your business and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid-sized businesses in Wilmington should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Availability and costs vary. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
If your business has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your company running smoothly and efficiently.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple carriers and redundant hardware for your system. The last thing you want is interruptions or slowdowns affecting your organization. You must provide enough bandwidth to avoid these pitfalls that sometimes occur during sudden usage spikes. Having both your hardware and your circuits capable of supporting many different, fast, and simultaneous connections is essential. It cannot be one or the other.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers can help. We’ll analyze your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We will then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.
An appointment for an assessment can be made by calling our office or clicking here to complete the contact form on the side of this page. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.