Today’s environment demands that companies in Wilmington have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
Our reliance on access to the net will become greater in the near and distant future.
The Internet has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is certainly ubiquitous. How can your needs be met? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet may be required. Does your company in Wilmington, North Carolina need one of these: 10 Meg access to The net, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 meg circuit or a 5 meg circuit?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your company must assess its needs. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Wilmington and distant sites or offices rely on you?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How will the downtime affect your business? How much uptime is essential to your business? 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. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Wilmington, North Carolina, 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 organization information communicate with third parties.
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 you have more than that, you may need more.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you 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.
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. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Are you interested in high-speed company Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Wilmington that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
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. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Your company may host its own servers. Do they run websites APIs or data feeds for external offices? Is your main company office with a hosted application accessed by 40 or even 50 branch office sites? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different places?
When data, programs, or information is hosted centrally, those outside your office must gain access. If the internet connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a business with a single office that needs to surf the web. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The net such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would probably not be enough.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple 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. Different buildings and tenants housed or working within those buildings all share that set amount of bandwidth. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. 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 options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your company. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. If you want to reach gigabit speeds from your organization out to the internet, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
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.
Circuits can go down in Wilmington even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. 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. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple carriers or circuits. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. If one carrier has a problem, the other likely will not.
To maximize the benefit of redundancy, consider looking for redundant circuits from different providers that have different pathway in Wilmington, North Carolina. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. Having redundancy in different physical directions can protect you if there is a serious incident at a data center or some accident that causes a regional circuit issue.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Please consider these situations:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are company that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What will happen to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls dropped? Will you sound muffled?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are remote offices able to work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Be sure you understand your requirements fully before choosing a solution. 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. Is an API utilized in your company so that your customers can access and speak with your system? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your business is entirely Internet based. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. No calls could be answered either. You are now officially out of business. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are the carriers that you are using reliable enough? Do you consistently get quality service that provides clear and reliable calls?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. To summarize:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. 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. 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 company.
You have a mid-sized Wilmington company; higher speed access to The web required. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple providers to provide and service different circuits. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous 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. To repeat, availability and prices vary. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. They need redundant circuits. Multiple providers are highly desirable. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. 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 carriers and services will help keep your organization up and running as efficiently as possible.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. After reviewing your current usage and demand levels, we are going to generate a cost effective plan that provides your organization with the resources it needs.
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