in General
One common challenge that almost all companies face when they outsource their Internet hosting is how they will connect their offices, stores and remote employees to their outsourced hosting infrastructure in the data center. It is essential to stay productive and not waste time on slow or unreliable connections when accessing company applications running in the data center. It is important to us at NetSource that you feel as though the data center is an extension of your office, and the key to that is ensuring a seamless connection between us.
Here we will discuss three solutions and how to decide which one is right for your company:
1. Site-to-Site VPN Connection
Your company locations are already connected to the Internet and so is the remote data center. So, one easy way to interconnect these locations to the data center is to setup a site-to-site VPN connection going through the Internet. This will be the lowest cost option. All you require are VPN appliances at the company locations and the data center. VPN capability is built into most firewall appliances so you may already have the equipment needed. Since VPNs create a secure channel using encryption, the data transfer is safe even as the data travels over the Internet.
2. Point-to-Point Connection
The VPN solution may work for many, however, it can potentially suffer from performance issues. When performance is a concern, a point-to-point connection between your company locations and the data center may be the way to go. NetSource can help you make this point-to-point connection in at least four ways:
a) Comcast virtual private circuit
b) Windstream wireless virtual private circuit
c) Zayo fiber virtual private circuit
d) Lightower fiber virtual private circuit
The NetSource data center is already equipped with Comcast ethernet connections, Windstream wireless, Zayo fiber, and AT&T fiber connectivity. Additionally, Lightower is coming by the end of the year. The key advantage with Comcast is that many company locations already have Comcast for Internet so connecting to the data center using Comcast may be the easiest and highest performance option. The main advantage to the Windstream wireless capability, built into the data center, is that you don’t need a wired connection at your company location. So, this option may be best for locations that do not have ready access to any Internet Service Provider. With Zayo and Lightower, you can get very high performance connections, even up to 10 gbps, 40 gbps, or 100 gbps.
3. Third Party Connection
Finally, if you don’t want Comcast, wireless, or Zayo or Lightower don’t have a presence at your company locations, then using any other third party provider is possible and might be the best choice. This solution is another form of the point-to-point connection. Your company could use any third party provider to get a point-to-point, MPLS, or other type of direct connection between your company locations and the data center. Practically any third party provider will have access to the NetSource data center.
It is important to note one other option. Remote employees need access to the hosting infrastructure at the data center too. This is almost always done with a remote VPN connection. All you need is the VPN appliance at the data center and a VPN client installed on an iPad, laptop or desktop computer. NetSource can help you with these, as needed.
These are new options available at NetSource over the last couple of years. Contact us today to discuss currently available options and how we can help you connect your office to the data center.