How to Reduce your Connectivity Costs by 75%
Many multi-office CPA firms are paying thousands of dollars per month for Internet and inter-office network connectivity. It doesn’t have to be this way. New equipment such as secure “router to router VPN” technology and multi-WAN routers are displacing the old Point-to-Point T1 as the preferred method of connecting offices both to each other and to the Internet.
Here’s how to cut your inter-office connectivity costs by a large percentage, while retaining a high (actually, higher) degree of information security:
Step 1
Purchase a Multi-Wan Router, which will connect you to multiple ISPs, such as 1 ADSL line and 1 cable modem, or up to 7 types of “public internet” connections. Costs range in price from $100-1,000. The more expensive ones will perform bandwidth aggregation.
Step 2
Sign up for service from 1 or more of these public Internet connection types (ADSL, SDSL, cable modem, satellite, T1, T3, Metropolitan Area Network). Don’t pay more than $100/mo. per connection. Make the service providers compete for your business. A decent DSL speed will give you 5 Mb/s download (that’s 3x faster than a T1) and 384 Kb/s upload. Two or three of these, teamed properly using one of the bandwidth aggregators from Step 1, will give you 15 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload. That’s still less than the cost of 1 T1, and far less than the cost of a Point-to-Point T1. You can even use the Premium Business DSL from SBC.
Step 3
For each office, purchase another router capable of router-to-router VPN. Costs range in price from $200-$2,000.
Step 4
Have your IT people configure the routers to act as if they are on the same LAN, using secure router-to-router VPN technology.
Summary
Your offices are now connected to the Internet by faster, less expensive, more redundant internet connections. Your offices are now interconnected by faster, less expensive, more redundant connections. You are now paying up to 75% less in connectivity costs. For a typical 5-office firm, this equates to annual savings around $100K, with an equipment outlay cost of $5-10K.