These days, companies in Woodland depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our dependence on Internet access will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
From video conferencing to voice over IP, email to data sharing and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is everywhere you look. What solution bet fits your needs? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet may be required. What is best for your business in Woodland? Will your organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Perhaps the net is only used for a few things such as email communication or surfing the web. Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Woodland.
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime required? Before buying, these are several of the questions that you need to answer.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. Before you choose your broadband internet, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. You will hear providers use terms like:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
At any company in Woodland some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the web if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is to speak with shippers, do research or place orders, Internet access is required.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. 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 many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with 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. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Are you regularly performing backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed business access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Woodland, California that have already been wired by a carrier. If you’d like to install high-speed Internet in your office, you should know that it might be more affordable than you realize.
Introducing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be expensive. Bringing a connection to a suite within the building is not. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed access to The net in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your company host its own servers to run information feeds, websites or application program interfaces (APIs) with companies or offices located outside of your four walls? Do fifty or so branch offices need access to a hosted application at your company headquarters? Are you hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? Are you an attorney with offices multiple cities or states? Do you have one office hosting data for several locations?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the web connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your organization, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?
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 web such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. While fast access to The net is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. While you may subscribe to a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection, you may be unable to reach those speeds during peak hours. Cable companies are known to limit or predetermine the amount of bandwidth available for delivery in any particular community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?
Other carriers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or organization. No one else uses it. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. Gigabit speeds from your office to the internet can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
The providers in this situation deliver high-speed to a particular building in sufficient quantity to split their circuit among various tenants. Of course, they must ensure that they each get the specific amount of their contracted speed.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Woodland, problems arise and circuits can fail. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
Consider redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. These redundant circuits help protect from certain failures, for example, router port issues or physical line trouble. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. While there is some security in this, you are still vulnerable under some circumstances.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different carriers. 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. You know the truth: that they are individual circuits and are there to back each other up in case one goes down. You will get more substantial protection from this diversity redundancy. In the event a carrier goes down, you will not have to worry. You will have a perfectly live carrier there to keep things moving.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Woodland, California. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. 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 places. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
The cost of dependable Internet access pales in comparison to the cost of unreliable access. Consider the following:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? Will the calls be choppy?
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. All of your locations, whether 2 or 2000, depend on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What will happen if your circuit crashes? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Process new orders? Share essential data? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Is the web integral to the proper function of your business? Do you count on it entirely? No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. You are now officially out of business. Is redundancy enough? Many of the finest call centers with the best reputations already understand and use redundancy. They should consider if they have sufficient protection. Are the carriers you currently use as reliable as they should be? Are they as reliable as you need them to be? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
You clearly have several choices. Your business needs and budgets will drive your decisions. To recap:
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. Is your building lit? If so, find out about gigabit or Metro Ethernet services. They may be reasonably priced options. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You have a mid-sized Woodland company; higher speed access to The net required. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed access to The net circuits. Optimally, multiple carriers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, choosing two 50 meg circuits versus one 100 meg circuit. As a reminder; availability and costs may vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Varied providers are optimal. You can increase redundancy with switches or routers. Having redundant equipment can also minimize risk. 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 right mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of carriers and services for your company, you will benefit.
For companies falling in this category, gigabit Internet circuits, Metro Ethernet Internet circuits and point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple carriers as well as redundant hardware. 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. Be sure to have the right circuits and hardware. They both must be able to support multiple, fast, concurrent connections.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. 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.
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