Internet Bandwidth Options

Reliable, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity used to be a “nice to have”, but this is quickly changing. Traditionally, office based computer users accessed shared computing resources via a local area network (LAN). Internet outages and slowdowns would disrupt web browsing and e-mail but work could continue because a LAN centric computer network didn’t require an Internet connection to provide users access to resources such as file sharing, print sharing and database access. The only people that were completely shut down by a disruption were remote workers.

Over time, businesses have come to rely more and more on their connection to the Internet. That reliance is accelerating with the advent of cloud computing. Broadly, cloud computing is using the Internet to deliver computing services such as e-mail and CRM. I’ve written about cloud computing before, you can read more about the benefits of cloud computing by clicking here.

Over the next few years it’s expected that businesses will migrate their LAN centric computer networks to a cloud-based computing environment. In a cloud-based computing environment every worker is a remote worker that’s completely dependent upon the organization’s Internet connection for access to corporate computing resources. This dependence really elevates the importance of the quality of the Internet connection. In addition to being reliable and fast, the connection really should have some redundancy built into the design.

At Endsight, we’ve been working with our clients to help them plan for this transition as part of our “all-inclusive” outsourced IT support program. Typically, we employ a design that includes hardware from SonicWALL and two Internet connections from competing Internet service providers (ISP)’s.

The hardware design and integration is fairly straightforward but selecting the right mix of ISPs isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of options each with its own cost / performance tradeoffs. I thought I’d try to summarize the available options. I’ve also linked to Wikipedia descriptions of each option if you’d like more detail.

Telecom options include DSL, T-1, & MPLS connections. Basically, these options leverage the phone company’s (mostly AT&T) telephone infrastructure. These solutions are tried and true and include service level assurances. You can purchase these options from a variety of providers and resellers. If this option makes sense, it’s important to work with a provider that will offer more support than simply providing a 1-800 number.

WiMax or fixed wireless broadband internet is becoming more and more popular. Instead of providing a connection using wires, this option uses fixed wireless antennas that are installed on the roof of a building. These antennas point to other antennas that terminate a connection into the public internet. This option offers high speeds at an economical cost. Its key limitation is that to work the antenna must have a line of site to the terminating point. This can sometimes be a real challenge.

Fiber-optic communication uses pulses of light transmitted through optical fiber. It is extremely fast and when compared to many other options, its cost / throughput is really economical. The main drawback is that the optical fiber required to transmit a signal is kind of scarce. If your business is in a metro area such as San Francisco or Oakland then your building may be “lit” meaning a fiber connection may already be available in your location. If not, then to take advantage of this technology the Telecom Company or ISP will have to deploy optical fiber and that could be prohibitively expensive. To find out if your building is “lit” send me an email and I’ll be glad to put you in contact with a partner that can help you.

Cable internet access uses the same infrastructure that is used to deliver cable television. It also offers high speed / high throughput internet access for an economical cost. As with fiber-optic communication, cable is dependent upon availability. In addition, cable is less reliable then some of the other options out there. This is less of an issue if there is a redundant connection from a Telecom or one of the other providers.

As I said, this is only a summary of some of the options. There is a lot more to this. If you feel like a deeper dive into your options might be helpful, please feel free to connect with us at Endsight. We included IT Strategy and part of our fixed fee outsourced IT service

Is Cloud Computing just Hosting by another Name? | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld

It’s an interesting question.  As small businesses, we will need to make sense of “cloud computing” and to try to determine what sort of impact, if any, this new concept will have on our business.  Eric Knorr’s take on the difference between cloud computing and hosting is interesting.  I think it does a fair job of trying to distinguish between the two concepts, but as with most articles I read, this is geared more towards the enterprise IT department.

Check our Eric’s article: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-just-hosting-another-name-453?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-06-15 

Basically, “cloud computing” is the industry’s new description for IT resources such as e-mail, being hosted somewhere other than on a server that sits in our office.  One of the distinctions between “cloud computing” and “hosting” is that with the cloud, we don’t have any idea where our data resides.  I think a great example of a “cloud” application would be Gmail.  We can log into our mail from a Webpage but we don’t have any idea where the e-mail resides exactly.  This is because Google has low-cost servers located all over the world and they use sophisticated load-balancing technology that moves information and data around their computing grid.  This approach allows us to use e-mail as a service, but it limits our control over the data.

Hosting is similar to cloud computing in at the IT resource resides outside of our corporate computing environment.  But unlike cloud computing, we know exactly, where our data resides.  Hosted Exchange, a Microsoft product, is a great example of this concept.  With this approach, e-mail resides off site at a co-location facility.  We know where the co-location facility is and we know, where the server or in many cases virtual server is located.  The same load-balancing concept applies to hosting in most cases, but it’s on a much smaller scale.  And it’s managed by the local hosting company or IT partner as opposed to Google.  The solution is less distributed, but it affords us more control.  

Regardless of what we call it or the specific architecture we apply there’s a good chance that our next major computing infrastructure upgrade will be to the cloud.  There’s just too many good reasons not to move services such as e-mail, file servers, and database applications out of our server closet and into a data center:

1. Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity: Moving our key server infrastructure to the cloud allows us to take advantage of all of the disaster preparedness countermeasures built into an enterprise class co-location facility.  These buildings are constructed to withstand earthquakes, fires, power disruptions and other “acts of God.”  They employ both physical and technological security that meets the most stringent regulatory requirements and most of them feature backbone access to the Internet with multiple redundant connections.  The end result is that if a disaster strikes our office, our computer systems weren’t there to be destroyed.  So long as our employees can access to the Internet, they can access our computing infrastructure and get back to work.

2. Scalability: Moving our servers to an enterprise class server and storage array that uses virtual technology allows us to access only the computing power that we need.  As our business grows, we simply add more computing power.  We don’t have to worry anymore about buying new equipment or what we will do with that equipment after a particular project is done.

3. Reduce Capital Costs: The cloud gives us the ability to pay a fixed monthly fee for our server infrastructure as opposed to laying out tons of cash to purchase all the equiptment  we need for a major network upgrade.  Instead, we only pay for what we need.

The key point that I gleaned from Eric’s article is this.  In the small-business space, many offerings will be cookie-cutter. (Like Gmail)  Small businesses using this service will not have the rich feature set that comes with an implementation of Microsoft Exchange.  In my experience, a cookie-cutter approach for something like e-mail will not work for the vast majority of small businesses.  As we explore our options for hosted or cloud solutions we need to be able to customize the offerings and service levels associated with those offerings.

The good news is that we won’t have to make these decisions immediately.  Microsoft relseased Windows Server 2008 and developers will soon be releasing business software maximised for the new platform.  The best way to explore a hosted / cloud infrastructure is too include it as an option in our next major upgrade.  

Endisght is already talking to a number of clients about this option right now.  Feel free to contact us if you’d like to talk about it to.