Reliable Internet access is the lifeblood of Wylie companies and their company. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends upon fast and reliable Internet access.
Internet access will become increasingly essential to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is ubiquitous. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. What is best for your organization in Wylie, Texas? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet or 100 Meg access to The web point?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your company really needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the net? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? There may be remote locations that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Wylie.
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? How will the downtime affect your organization? Does your company require uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed access to The Internet. 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 business. Don’t be distracted by terminology. While you may hear service providers throw out words and phrases like:
… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
At most businesses including those in Wylie, Texas, some or all employees need Internet access. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The number of employees you have may determine your best solution. 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 a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the internet simultaneously.
You may not need as much high-speed access to The net if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. If your business functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Are you performing routine backups? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.
Does your organization use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? When people save a file, it gets pushed to the cloud. The file is then synched 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.
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. These are typically found in “lit buildings” in Wylie, Texas. Carriers have already wired these buildings. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
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. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The net with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or company premises? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct company. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Can your intranet solution support your needs? Can it support multiple simultaneous connections? Is it stable enough to handle this when they are from various sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. It is advisable that high-speed access to The net be available at the central company office or headquarters, including gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuits. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. This could probably not be accomplished with a cable modem.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. It is possible that you have a cable modem with a 30 Meg connection but cannot reach proper speeds during peak hours. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. 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. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this scenario, the bandwidth is fully allocated to you and your company or company. No one else uses it. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.
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 business out to the net, you can by using a gigabit Internet provider.
In these cases, the providers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Wylie, Texas has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
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. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Wylie have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 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.
access to The web costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable access to The Internet is greater. Please consider these situations:
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? What about phone call quality? Will you lose calls? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the center of your company. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Are your other offices able to do any work? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular organization. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. You may operate a service like this: other systems speak with yours via an API to figure out freight prices, stock prices, to compile weather data or receive any other information that you provide. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? Customers do not enjoy repeated outages. How long with they put up with them before looking to take their company elsewhere?
Your company is entirely Internet based. What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? No calls could be answered either. Basically, you are out of company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your budget, as well as the needs of your company, will help drive your decisions. In review:
If you are a small business, 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 company in Wylie, Texas, you will need higher-speed access to The Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. 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. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Companies with different sites, whether 5 or 50, are at the highest risk. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Different carriers are desirable. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. 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 web circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Redundant hardware and redundant circuits will, for these businesses, ensure the greatest uptime. Be sure the circuits are from different providers. 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.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. 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 engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will 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.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.