Strategies to Avoid Network Bottlenecks

Your network is an imperative part of your business, insofar as it is quite literally what powers your operations and enables you to work productively… at least, most of the time. Alas, there is always the risk of a network bottleneck, or a limited capacity for data to move due to a lack of available bandwidth. So, how can these bottlenecks be avoided?

Listed below are a few strategies that can help.

Split Up Your Network

Or, in other words, put something called network segmentation into play. Network segmentation is essentially a process where you divide up your overarching network into smaller sub-networks, which allows you to devote more of your resources to those sub-networks that have higher demands. This helps to reduce bottlenecks by preventing too many resources from trying to share the same network and allowing you to allocate bandwidth where it is more necessary.

Prioritize Critical Data and Traffic

Certain elements of your network are going to be more important than others. Luckily, much like you can split up your network, you can reserve bandwidth for more critical tasks and processes. How to best do so will depend on your needs, as using more bandwidth for certain processes leaves less for others, but balancing your needs strategically allows you to optimize your use of your network resources.

Monitor Your Traffic

Naturally, it always helps to know where your problem areas are—in this case, where your network is experiencing its major congestion issues. Monitoring your network and generally keeping an eye on your traffic will help you to identify potential bottlenecks as they occur, allowing you to resolve them more efficiently.

Consider Your Hardware and How It Builds Your Network

When you experience a bottleneck, it’s also a valuable opportunity to consider how your network can be improved to avoid these kinds of problems through upgrades or updates. Maintaining your network infrastructure itself can help you avoid the impacts that a bottleneck can incur by eliminating the likelihood of one occurring at all.

Add Some Bandwidth

Finally, there’s always the opportunity to upgrade your network infrastructure to add some more bandwidth to it. Since bottlenecks are created when there is too much traffic to expeditiously traverse your existing network cabling, increasing the available bandwidth of your network by investing in a router that offers more or even trying to update the one you are currently using can help. You can even adjust where your network hardware is located to make some difference to your bandwidth.

We Can Help Improve Your Business Technology

From helping you optimize your bandwidth so network bottlenecks are avoided to ensuring practically any other IT issue is handled effectively, Macro Systems can be there to help. Give us a call at 703-359-9211 so we can start a conversation about your needs and how we can attend to them.