In today’s world, Youngstown, Ohio companies need dependable access to The Internet. It is the lifeblood of their business. Fast and reliable access to The Internet is needed for companies to function properly; large corporations and small businesses alike.
Our reliance on access to the internet will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. What solution bet fits your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Do you need Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may be required. Your Youngstown company probably needs a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The Internet, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point but which one is best?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting data in Youngstown? Do remote sites depend upon you?
How would an outage to your high-speed Internet affect your business? What about the downtime that results? Can your organization afford that? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
Plainly stated, companies require high-speed Internet access. Deciding on the right broadband is not easy. It requires a thorough cost-benefit analysis. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Most companies in Youngstown require that some or all of their workers have access to the web. access to The web may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The best solution may rely on how many employees you have. An Internet circuit of 5 -10 megabytes might be enough for your business if you only have a few people working for you. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.
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.
Do you routinely backup? 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.
Do you use a file-sharing service? Perhaps you use Google drive, DropBox or a different service? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. The right amount of capacity or bandwidth is necessary to support this function in conjunction with every other service you have.
Are you interested in high-speed business 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 Youngstown, Ohio that have already been wired by a carrier. Choosing to add high-speed Internet to your office is a tough decision but it can be less expensive and easier than you think.
While bringing Metro Ethernet to a new building can be an expensive proposition, bringing that connection to a suite within the building is not. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this depends upon availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your company headquarters with a hosted application accessed by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail business with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Are you a legal practice hosting the data for three places?
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. 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.
For a single office surfing the web, a cable modem or inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be sufficient. For the headquarters, high-speed Internet access including Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely be insufficient.
There is a price that comes along with choosing a cable modem or other lower cost circuit. 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. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some carriers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
In these scenarios, carriers 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.
Youngstown has some carriers that offer exceptional Internet bandwidth products and services. However, circuits can still go down and cause disruption. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Try using redundant circuits.
There are, in reality, two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. If your carrier experiences a regional outage or you have a line broken outside of your building, you may lose the use of all of your circuits. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
The second way to set up circuit redundancy is by using two different providers to bring in 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. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. This is called diversity redundancy and offers more protection that the first. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the providers you look at in Youngstown have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. By doing this, if there is a significant problem such as a fire at a data center, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these scenarios:
Your organization is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. What will happen to your telephone calls as the amount of usable bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are the calls going to be dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
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, depend on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What will happen in the event of a circuit failure? Is it a mere annoyance or a catastrophic failure? Can meaningful work be conducted at your remote offices? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share information? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. 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? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Does your organization completely rely on the web? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of company. 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 providers that you are using reliable enough? Clear and reliable calls are essential. Does your carrier service consistently provide this?
You clearly have many options. The needs and budget of your company will both affect your choices. To summarize:
Sometimes redundancy is not important to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. 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. Prices will vary. They are based on your location and circuit availability; speak with our engineers to learn your best options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Youngstown, Ohio, need higher speed access to The web. 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. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. You should speak with our experts to learn the options for your particular location.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers or carriers are recommended. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business 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. You will want to have the greatest protection of your uptime. To accomplish this you must have redundancy: redundant circuits from multiple providers and redundant hardware for your system. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. 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 analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. Our experts will examine your current usage and demand. We will then generate a design that gives you the resources you need while keeping your business up and running at a reasonable cost.
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