Are These Performance Issues Affecting Your Business Network?
Nobody wins when a network isn’t performing correctly – that’s a fact. Network performance issues can drag down a company’s network until it operates at a level that isn’t sustainable for business purposes. These performance issues are not only annoying for both workers and IT teams, but they also cost your enterprise time and money to fix. The first step in dealing with these performance issues is knowing if they’re affecting your network.
That’s why a good network performance monitoring (NPM) solution is essential for any business. Network monitoring solutions continuously examine a network for performance issues and alert IT teams when they discover one. If your business is looking to invest in a monitoring solution, our 2019 Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide has you covered! It contains profiles on the 28 best network monitoring providers and tools in the market today, including descriptions of the tools they offer and noteworthy features of each. The guide also features 10 questions you should ask prospective vendors and yourself before buying a network monitoring solution. You can check out that guide here!
In this article, we’ll examine some common performance issues that could be affecting your business network – and how a performance monitoring solution can help you solve them.
Bandwidth congestion
Ideally, you want your business to be using as much bandwidth as possible without going over your limit. If your enterprise is trying to transmit too much data at one time, then you’ll have data waiting to be transferred while the network frees up space. Your network monitoring solution can continuously measure your used and available bandwidth, alerting your network team when bandwidth usage is reaching critical levels.
Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks occur when a node or connection isn’t equipped to handle the same bandwidth rates as other devices. Old or cheap devices might not be able to deal with the high bandwidth levels that other nodes on your network can. That means that when it comes time for it to transfer large amounts of data, those devices will slow your network down. Network monitoring tools are able to display how much data is transmitted through a network node, allowing to to find weak links.
Misconfiguration
In order for your network to function properly, each node that connects to it must be configured to work with each other. Making a mistake while configuring a device could mean that it doesn’t perform properly, causing errors in data transferal. Whenever you change a device’s configuration, you should test its performance to ensure that there haven’t been any slip-ups.
Malware
Security threats can target your enterprise’s network and slow down its performance. Malware could be hiding on your network and waiting for the right moment to strike. Many network monitoring tools are able to look for malware and other security threats in addition to performance issues. There are also network detection and response (NDR) tools that specifically look for security threats hiding on a network.
Hardware failure
If a piece of hardware on your network is malfunctioning or goes dead, it can significantly reduce network performance depending on how important it is. Switches, routers, hubs, etc. can fail at any time, especially if they aren’t maintained properly. Network monitoring tools can detect malfunctioning hardware by checking device status, usually through a ping or SNMP request. To prevent a failing piece of hardware from destroying network functionality, your network team should ensure multiple connections between the nodes on your network; this way, data has more than one pathway to take to get from point A to point B.
Looking for a solution to help you improve your network performance? Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitor vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying.
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