Everyone wants their internet and private networks
functioning at top levels all day, every day. For many people, it means quicker
responses to queries, seamless communication, and tasks getting completed in good
time. It’s what makes work smooth and productive for many people and
businesses.

We get frustrated when networks degrade or fail. Our work slows
down and productivity levels dip. And if connectivity is an important part of
your business’s service delivery, your customers may experience network defects
as a poor product of customer experience coming from your end.

If you don’t solve the problem early enough, you could lose
clients. In the end, it might cost you a lot of (unearned) money.    

So you’ll want to deal with your network issues as quickly
as you can. Even better, you should be preventing them from happening in the
first place.

First, you need to know what network performance issues
you’re most likely to face. When you’ve learned this, you’ll be better able to
prevent them, or deal with them if they crop up.

Common Network
Performance Issues that Businesses Face

1. Congested
Bandwidth

Maybe you often use more data at any given time than your
bandwidth can take care of. It’s not large enough to accommodate the amount of
traffic that goes through your networks. If you have the right monitoring
tools, you’ll see what users and devices contribute the most to the
congestion.   

2. Failed Hardware

In some cases, network outages are the result of failed
devices in the network infrastructure. Common culprits in this category include
broken cables and damaged switches. Disabled devices can also cause networks to
slow down or shut down.

3. Network Loop

A network loop is when there are multiple paths to two
endpoints on a network. This usually happens if there’s a problem with the way
the network is configured. When there’s a loop, traffic keeps going back to its
source– and growing in the process –instead of stopping at its destination.
The expanding traffic will choke your bandwidth and slow your network. 

4. Incorrect Device
Configuration

When devices are poorly configured, they won’t function as
they should. This, in turn, causes performance problems for the networks that
they support, or are a part of. 

5. Hidden Devices

Your employees may have connected more devices or
applications to your network than what’s officially accounted for. These
additions could be slowing your network speed. Unless you have a network
monitoring tool or system that tracks these things, you won’t know what’s
weakening your network’s performance.

6. Prolonged Backup
Process

Let’s say you set data backup to happen overnight. But for
some reason, it extends into the working day. If it’s still going on during
work hours, it could impede traffic on your networks. Prolonged backup
processes, regardless of when they’re initiated, will slow down other
significant traffic being generated at the same time.

How Do You Know When
You Have a Network Problem?

There could be a problem with your network if you detect any
of these things:

•Network services are not available for your users at a particular
time

•Increased network latency (i.e. slow network)

•Complaints about slow response times from your end-users

•Clients frequently get disconnected from your
applications   

How to Solve Your
Network Problems

Here’s how to prevent common network issues from cropping
up, and deal with them if they arise.

1. Increase Your
Network Visibility

Deploy network monitoring tools to help you track the
traffic on your networks. They will give you greater visibility of your
networks and reveal what the data consuming users and devices are, so you can
curb the excess traffic that may be coming from them.

2. Prioritize
Applications

Assign more bandwidth to applications that are closer to the
top of your priority list, and less to those closer to the bottom. You may even
have to remove some applications from your systems if they don’t contribute to
your operations or productivity.

3. Use Compression

One way to free up your network channels is to compress
large files before sharing them. There’s a catch: it may take a while to
compress files, especially if they’re really large. If you’re dealing with
transactions, you will be better off adopting a technology that enables the
speedy transmission of data instead. 

4. Time Your Traffic

This solves the problem of backup-induced network slowdowns.
You can restrict heavy-duty work like backups to times in which networks have
little else passing through them. This spreads out your traffic more evenly
across the time that you have.  

5. Shut Out Junk
Traffic

Put up things like firewalls and spam filters that can
prevent irrelevant traffic from clogging your channels. Malware could also
affect your network’s performance as well, so you should have a reliable
antivirus installed too.

6. Check Device
Configurations

If poorly configured devices are a cause of network
difficulties, it makes sense for you to ascertain that their configurations are
in order before they are in full use. This will reduce the incidence of network
loops and slowdowns.

7. Educate Your Staff

Encourage employees to adopt data saving practices. They can
access documents from a single cloud platform, instead of sharing those documents
and holding them in private storage. Let them know how connecting more devices
to the network than you authorize can stifle network speed and ultimately cost
your company. Train them to react appropriately to risks like malware and DDoS
attacks that could slow your networks.

Conclusion

The quality of your network will play a part in determining
your organization’s productivity. If you have continuous connectivity problems,
it could negatively affect your work, your customer’s perception of your business,
and your revenues in the long run.

It also helps to have a proper IT services provider take
care of your network issues. That’s what you’ll get from us at Layer3. For over a decade, we have helped
organizations in the public and private sector solve their IT problems. We
continue to deliver network security, virtualization, and data center solutions
to our clients across Nigeria, enabling them with technologies that drive them up
the growth ladder.   

Is your business struggling with network issues? We can help
you fix them. Send us an email via enquiry@layer3.com.ng,
or contact us here, and we’ll get back to you.