Business Internet

FiberGuide offers a one stop tool for accessing the leading business Internet providers in the United States. Through the patented and popular carrier research tool, GeoQuote, businesses of all sizes can search for providers nearest to them, check out their packages and in some cases instantly generate quotations for multiple providers and packages.

There are over 2,500 Internet service providers in the USA, most of them offering some form of business Internet services. At FiberGuide, we guide businesses of all sizes sift through the leading business Internet providers that will best meet their technical requirements and budget. It is imperative that users are well aware of the Internet requirements for their business applications in order to avoid subscribing to the wrong service.

It is very common for small businesses to focus entirely on download speed as the singular specification for their Internet service. Unfortunately, download speed alone, without additional specifications can be very misleading. The price for 10 Mbps, for example, can range in price from as low as $20/month to as high as $2,500/month! Obviously, there too many factors that drive the price and should be well specified.

Questions you need to answer before selecting business Internet providers

The following questions can serve as guide to an IT manager shopping for an Internet access solution. Answers to these questions can also help a FiberGuide agent recommend the correct solution for you.

• Does “best effort” mass market business broadband, similar to most residential Internet access, meet your business requirements?
• Are your applications better served by a dedicated connection to the Internet?
• How many people in the office will share the Internet connection?
• How soon and how often do you anticipate upgrading your service to higher speed?
• Does the Internet connection have to be symmetrical (equal download and upload speeds)?
• Is downtime or availability an important consideration for your application?
• Is latency an important consideration for your application?
• Is jitter an important consideration for your application?
• Do you have a preference for access technology (mobile, fixed wireless, cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.

Mass market broadband and dedicated business Internet

The following paragraphs summarize some of the differences between mass market business broadband and dedicated Internet access.

Mass market business broadband access

In order to offer broadband services to as many homes as possible at reasonable prices, providers design mass market broadband services such as cable and DSL to be shared.

The Internet service provider understands that not all residential users in any given community are likely to be on the Internet at the same time.  As a result, they over-subscribe the bandwidth. This so called “best effort” Internet bandwidth will fluctuate as the number of people using the Internet at the same time changes.  However, for most home users and applications, this is hardly an issue and most may not even be aware of the fluctuations.

If you run a small business or home based business and you use the Internet for emails, surfing the Internet and other light Internet applications, mass market business broadband is the most cost effective option. Moreover, when you subscribe to a business broadband service, you get additional features that are not available to home users. These may include better security, web hosting, better customer support and custom emails. For more mission critical applications such as high bandwidth connection to cloud services and video conferencing, a dedicated Internet connection may be your best bet.

Dedicated Internet access

Almost all major business Internet providers, at least all our partner providers, offer dedicated Internet access. In other words, leading Internet providers are also dedicated Internet providers.

A dedicated Internet connection is designed exclusively for the use of the subscriber. Unlike mass market broadband, it is not shared with other members of the community. Dedicated Internet access comes with the following benefits:

Guaranteed Bandwidth:

If you are purchasing a dedicated Internet package from a business Internet provider, they must guarantee the speed. If you are purchasing 100Mbps, you should always get at least 100Mbps no matter what time of day it is and no matter how many people are online in your area. Guaranteed bandwidth can be thought of as having a 1:1 contention ratio where a channel is not shared with neighbors.

Service Level Agreement

For a service to be considered dedicated, it should come with a Service Level Agreement (SLA). SLA guarantees network uptime, latency, packet loss, and some business Internet providers also guarantee jitter.

Of all these, uptime is the most critical for all businesses.  When leasing a business Internet service to connect your sites for mission critical applications, you expect high network availability. The network service should always be there when you need it.

Uptime is a measure of the time the network is operational as opposed to downtime when the network is not functioning. Uptimes can range from 99.5% to 99.999% (the so called 5 nines) but typical providers offer services with 99.9% to 99.99% uptime. While the difference might look trivial, these uptimes translate to 9 hours of downtime per year for 99.9% and 1 hour of downtime per year for the 99.99% uptime. For some applications such a difference is a big deal.

Dedicated Internet is provisioned over a wide range of technologies including T1 lines, cable, DSL and Ethernet.

Dedicated Ethernet Internet access

Today, Ethernet is very widely used in almost all business networks and for Internet access. The advantage of Ethernet in the local area network including its ubiquity, flexibility, scalability, low cost per bit is being realized in Internet access as well. Most businesses now opt to use Ethernet for Internet requirements.

Using Ethernet over fiber, up to 10Gbps bandwidth is now available in most fiber lit buildings. While Ethernet over fiber is not yet readily available in most buildings, Ethernet over copper is a viable option more readily available and can offer up to 50Mbps.

Contact FiberGuide if you have any questions.