Posts made in December, 2015
Struggling Against Bandwidth Balance?
No matter the speed of your business network, it can all be squandered if balancing techniques aren’t in place. Files are becoming bigger and the influx of tech-savvy workers need to be able to move, swipe, access, and modify files without much of a wait. If you’re having issues with internal network speeds or even fighting over Internet resources, take a look at what’s going wrong and how to keep everything in balance.
Bandwidth Is A Finite Resource
Consider the daily activities on a computer network. Users need to access files both on the internal share drives and across the Internet. Every click on the internal network needs to move files from one computer or server to the requesting computer.
When multiple users are doing the same thing, a certain amount of traffic is used. The maximum amount of traffic is the maximum bandwidth, and you’ll need enough bandwidth to make sure that files aren’t being slowed down when too many people are moving files.
It’s not just possible for bandwidth to be depleted and competed over, it’s probable. Technology changes, and file sizes may increase faster than you upgrade your equipment. The same goes for the Internet access, although Internet may be easier to notice since you’re subscribing to a finite service with an easily referenced limit.
The problem with internal networks is that you need to know the speed of every device. The network is only as fast as the slowest device, so any router, server or other devices used to pass around data can slow down your file sharing and information gathering. This makes it easier for the network to be overloaded with too many requests.
Get Balancing Assistance From Professionals
If you haven’t been using a network administration team, or if your network hasn’t been inspected since installation (or if you installed the system on your own), there are a lot of configuration changes that need to be made.
Out of the box, many network devices are designed to send information from source to destination through the fastest–but not necessarily the shortest–path available. Modern devices are designed to deliver basic load balancing techniques, such as stopping a single user from consuming all of the bandwidth, but it isn’t efficient without some changes.
A managed IT service professional can designate specific users, computers or even activities to take priority over others. If you want everyone to have equal bandwidth usage, but want live video conferences or specific file downloads to take priority, a deep system of configuration can make your needs a reality. Not sure about the priorities needed? The expert team can develop a plan that works for most businesses.
Contact a managed IT services professional to discuss your network balancing needs and to begin a network maintenance plan.
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