Are You Pushing Your Network Too Hard?

In order for an organization to maintain operations, a strong network that’s capable of handling internal traffic is necessary. These networks handle the deployment and access of mission-critical data, applications, and other important tasks that businesses depend on. Sometimes, however, a business can push their network too hard, which can have a profound effect on its functionality, and an even greater effect on that organization’s ability to continue operations.

Why a Network Might Perform Poorly
It’s actually much easier than you might think for a business to hit their network’s maximum capacity. If your business has experienced unprecedented growth recently, this usually means that there will be more strain on the network than originally anticipated. More users accessing the same applications across the same old network will inevitably cause some problems down the road, especially if nothing is done to facilitate and accommodate the increased traffic.

Other times, however, a network might just be suffering from old age. Hardware that’s been around the block a time or two might not hold up the way it used to, and your access to information could suffer because of it. This is why it’s so important to monitor your business’s infrastructure and ensure that any malfunctioning hardware is promptly taken care of.

Indicators of Poor Network Performance
If you feel that you might be losing some productivity due to poor network performance, consider these telltale signs:

• Poor application performance. If your employees are having trouble accessing important applications, one problem might be due to an overloaded network. If a network is trying to process too much traffic, applications will load slower, and therefore, won’t be as useful for your productivity as anticipated.
• Ask employees. Nothing helps you understand the current state of your network better than asking the end-users. Perhaps you’ve run into a couple of issues yourself, but either way, you need to confirm that there’s a problem with not only your own network access, but all avenues of your organization’s network access.
• Slow network performance in general. You know there’s something wrong with your network when it takes several minutes to load files that are stored on it.

Get a Network Consultation
The problem with managing a network is that it’s an exceptionally knowledge-intensive task. You don’t want just anyone managing your entire network infrastructure. Instead, you should have skilled professionals like those at Directive take a comprehensive analysis of your network infrastructure. We have the ability to point out bottlenecks in your network infrastructure, potential resource hogs that are bogging it down, and other troublesome flaws that might be hurting your staff’s ability to get its job done. Give us a call today at 607.433.2200 to schedule a network audit and consultation.