Today’s environment demands that companies in Azusa, California have reliable Internet service in order to run their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
access to The web will become increasingly vital to us in the coming months and years. Our dependence on Internet access will only grow as time goes on.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. What is the best fix to meet your needs? Maybe a cable modem is a sufficient solution. Your needs may point to Metro Ethernet as a solution. Gigabit Internet? Will your Azusa company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The web or 100 Meg access to The net point?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Will Internet usage mainly involve cloud servers and real time data connection? Are you hosting data in Azusa, California? Do remote sites rely on you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? What about the downtime that results? Can your company afford that? Is uptime essential to the success of your organization? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When choosing the right broadband internet for organization, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. Many providers toss out terms such as:
… do not lose sight of the real issues: what are the capabilities and technical solutions you need to best serve your company?
Workers for most companies in Azusa have some need to access the net during the course of their job. Internet access may be needed to conduct research, use third-party applications or to order supplies.
The best solution may rely upon how many employees you have. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have more than that, you may need more.
Do your employees primarily use an intranet system? If so, you may not need much high-speed Internet service. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
Your company location may cause you to think about high-speed business access to The net such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Azusa that are already wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your company.
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 web in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Consider whether your organization 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 hosting the point of sale (POS) system for 15, 000 retail chain stores? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the internet connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different sites?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the net. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse 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 have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? 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 case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of neighbors, or other tenants, you should have the full capacity of your circuit at all times.
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. Want to reach gigabit speeds? 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 Azusa, California even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
The answer is redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. In this situation, the redundancy helps protect you from port issues or physical line issues. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
In the second type of redundancy, you bring in circuits from two different carriers. 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 providers or circuits. In fact, they are totally redundant and separate. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. In the event that one carrier goes down, the other will still be alive.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Azusa, California. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. They would be on outside phone poles or underground conduits in different directions and leading to different places. 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.
Even though Internet access comes with a cost, you will save money if you make sure it is dependable. Unreliable access will end up costing you more in the long run. Consider the following:
Your office uses a cable modem and, in addition to you, the carrier provides 10-15 additional tenants with circuits. It is possible that during normal organization hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As the amount of accessible bandwidth decreases, what happens to your needs? What happens to your phone calls? What happens to the strength and quality of that call? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Whether you are a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your locations, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Can your satellite or remote office do any work at all? What about new orders? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. 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 communicate with yours via an API to figure out freight rates, 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? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Is the internet integral to the proper function of your business? Do you rely on it entirely? What if your representatives can make no outgoing telephone calls because your circuits go down? There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Your company is basically done with. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not essential to you. For example, If you are a small business, with just one office location, a single access to The net 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. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You will need higher speed access to The web if you have a medium sized company in Azusa. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. Using different circuits and different providers will, if you choose, provide you with 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. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. It is helpful if they use multiple carriers. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. 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 best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
For businesses that fit this description, it is essential to have gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet 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. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no slowdowns or interruptions. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
The risk of insufficient bandwidth or failing circuits is tremendous. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. Choosing the right mix of circuits and hardware is a daunting task.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
If you would like to arrange for an assessment, please click here to complete the contact information form to the right. You can call our office as well. Assessments are completed in as little as 48 hours.