How To Reduce Network Bottlenecks

Saturday, 21 December 2024, 2:19 pm
Article: Hugh Grant

Your business network likely suffers from bottlenecks, at least occasionally. Rare, temporary bottlenecks are typically not a concern, but if these bottlenecks grow in severity or frequency, the productivity of your entire operation could be at stake.

What steps can you take to reduce network bottlenecks in your organization?

Monitor and Analyze Network Traffic

With the help of network monitoring software, you'll be able to intuitively visualize and keep tabs on all your network traffic in real time. You can watch for strange or aberrant patterns, get notified when there's unusual activity, and put yourself in a position to take action whenever bottlenecks emerge.

This is particularly helpful because it gives you a two-pronged approach to managing bottlenecks. First, you can identify bottlenecks as they emerge, so you can take immediate action to resolve them and restore your network to full functionality. Second, you can monitor and analyze long-term patterns of bottlenecks and network traffic to determine which major changes you should make to your network to help it flow more smoothly.

Consider Increasing Bandwidth

One of the easiest ways to reduce network bottlenecks is to increase your bandwidth. The obvious problem here is that increasing your bandwidth is going to increase your costs, and probably in multiple ways. You may have to upgrade your service, you may have to invest in more devices, and you may be responsible for more monitoring and maintenance as well.

Still, depending on the needs of your business, this may be the most viable solution. If you find that you're consistently struggling with bottlenecks and that your short-term fixes are minimally effective, or if you find that your bottlenecks are coming from all directions, increasing bandwidth may be the best way to go. The big question to ask yourself is whether your bottleneck problem is severe enough that upgrading the bandwidth would add productivity benefits that outweigh the costs.

Prioritize Traffic Intelligently

Traffic prioritization isn’t always straightforward, since you probably have many different users with different work priorities, different schedules, and different apps to manage. Generally, organizations highly prioritize traffic related to real time communication (such as video conferences), critical applications, and any functions dealing with sensitive data that requires low latency. Medium priority traffic includes things like general web browsing, email communications, moderately important file transfers, and similar operations. Lower priority traffic includes things like larger file downloads, software and operating system updates, and any data that isn't considered critical.

If you restrict lower priority traffic in anticipation of bottlenecks, it could help make sure that your most important traffic continues uninterrupted.

Replace or Update Outdated Hardware

Make sure to inspect and maintain your network regularly. If you notice any old, outdated, or malfunctioning hardware, replace it. You may also need to make updates to help your network run more smoothly and achieve its fullest potential.

Find Ways to Limit Intensive Applications

Your organization probably depends on many bandwidth-intensive applications, such as video conferencing software. If you're struggling with network bottlenecks, consider finding ways to limit how much data these apps demand. For example, you could apply lower quality settings, restrict meeting times or the frequency of meetings, or guide users on how to use these types of applications in a more efficient way.

Educate Your Users

If your users properly understand bandwidth usage and the demands of various applications, they may be more responsible in how they use network resources. If a traffic-intensive application isn't truly necessary, employees should be in a position to decide not to use it, or use an alternative during peak hours.

Analyze at the High Level

Take the time to analyze your network patterns at the high level. When do you notice the most network bottlenecks? How severe are those bottlenecks? What applications are responsible for causing those bottlenecks? And how do things ebb and flow throughout the day and the week?

This high-level analysis allows you to identify patterns and opportunities that might otherwise elude you. For example, if you find that network bottlenecks peak on Wednesday mornings because that's when most of your departments have standing team meetings, you might be able to distribute those meetings throughout the week to ease the burden on your network.

Continuously Adapt

Avoiding network bottlenecks means continuously adapting. The needs of your business and your employees aren't going to remain stagnant, and neither will the architecture or the services associated with your network. Only by committing to regular evaluation and changes will you be able to continue minimizing bottlenecks in the future.

Plan for the Long Term

Finally, make sure everything you do is framed in the context of a long-term plan. There's nothing wrong with taking immediate action to resolve a bottleneck in progress, but if you want to avoid issues as much as possible, you need to be working proactively.

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