Araxus Consulting has a very strong background in the area of Internet connectivity. We can help you evaluate your connectivity needs, find an appropriate Internet Service Provider to meet your requirements and your budget, install and manage your connections, audit your network security, and implement an intranet that securely connects your offices, either locally or around the world.
For convenience, we categorize our Internet connectivity offerings into the services described below:
If you have a small office, or are just starting to look at the Internet, we can help you find an appropriate ISP, install your modem, and configure your computer to access the Internet. Combined with a basic web site hosted by your ISP, this may be the only connectivity that a small business requires.
Using an appropriate modem, you can access the Internet using standard analog telephone lines at speeds between 28.8 kbps (thousand bits per second) through 56 kbps. With an ISDN modem and ISDN digital telephone line from the telephone company, you can access the Internet at speeds of 64 kbps or 128 kbps.
If you work in a small to medium-sized office, it may be appropriate to choose a service that lets everyone on the office network access the Internet. By connecting your Local Area Network to the Internet using a router and either a standard or ISDN telephone line, any computer which is on your LAN can access the Internet without needing a modem or a dedicated telephone line for each user. Add a web site hosted by your ISP and your business becomes part of the digital world.
The router can connect to the Internet using either a standard analog telephone line, at speeds up to 56 kbps, or (preferably) an ISDN digital phone line, at speeds of up to 128 kbps.
For larger offices, or small offices that need either very fast or constant access to the Internet, a permanent leased line is the way to go. By connecting a router to your office network, and then connecting the router to an ISP using a permanent leased line, everyone on the Local Area Network can access the Internet at very high speeds. In addition, because the leased line is always connected to the Internet, 24 hours per day, you can maintain public servers on your network, allowing you to host your own web site, FTP site, or proprietary service.
There are currently many different speeds for leased line connections, ranging from 56 kbps through 155 mbps (million bits per second). We have experience working with leased lines at speeds of 56 kbps or 64 kbps (DS0), 1.5 mbps (T1), 2 mbps (E1), 34 mbps (E3), 45 mbps (T3), and 155 mbps (OC3). In addition to the various speeds, there are also options for the protocols used on the leased line to transmit the data. We have experience with Frame Relay, SMDS, Sonet/SDH, and ATM.
We can explain the differences between all of these options to you, and help you determine which combination of speeds and protocols will best meet your requirements and your budget.
If you have multiple offices, an outside sales force, or need access to your office network from home or while on the road, then an "intranet" may be just what you need. Traditionally, to meet these needs you would have to implement a complex and expensive private network. However, with the world-wide presence of the Internet, and developing innovations in data security and encryption, you can implement a virtual private network, or VPN, over the public Internet for a fraction of the cost and complexity of maintaining your own network.
We can work with you to establish the appropriate connectivity between each location and a local ISP. Once the basic Internet access is available for each site and each mobile user, hardware and software can be installed to allow secure, private connections over the public Internet backbone.
For companies with a requirement that their Internet connectivity must never fail, we have experience implementing complete network redundancy using multiple connections to multiple Internet Service Providers. If you want the Internet to be an important part of your business, you should investigate this service.
We are experts in the use of advanced routing protocols such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), allowing you to make optimum use of connections via multiple ISPs. We can obtain the necessary resources, including an autonomous system (AS) number, provider independent address space, etc. Installing and maintaining a truly resilient presence on the Internet can be very complex, but few consulting companies can match our experience in this area. If it can be done, we can do it for you.
When you connect to the Internet, you are taking a risk. For most companies, the risk is actually very small, but we can make it even smaller. Using techniques ranging from basic packet filters to advanced, dynamic firewalls, we can build security into your Internet connectivity. We can also provide a security audit of your existing Internet connections.
Once your Internet connectivity is installed, there are still major on-going tasks in maintaining the link. We can provide a maintenance contract for managing the service. This includes monitoring the utilization of your link and performance of your security systems, working with your ISP to trouble-shoot any outages (and obtain compensation for down time if appropriate), and performing any configuration changes required.
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