Poor network performance can cost your business in more ways than one. Users will be forced to deal with bad VoIP Quality, long download times, slow application performance, and plummeting productivity levels. That’s why optimizing network performance is crucial to your business’ everyday success
Good network performance is based on a network’s ability to meet the expectations of users and sustain a variety of core business applications. Networks have different requirements, depending on the size of the business, the number of users and applications, and the scope of the network infrastructure. Nonetheless, the tips for optimizing network performance remain the same.
In this article, we’ll be going through 5 simple tips for optimizing network performance using network performance monitoring.
- Monitor Network Performance
User complaints about slow loading times, or laggy video calls are a sure sign that your network may not be performing at an optimal level. You need to fix network performance issues before they reach end-users.
Network performance monitoring (or NPM) is the end-to-end monitoring of network performance to identify network performance issues that are affecting your end-users and customers – even if those network problems occur outside of your local network infrastructure.
With network performance monitoring, you can:
- Test your network for performance issues.
- Identify network issues before they affect uses.
- Collect network data to troubleshoot network problems.
- Troubleshoot passed intermittent issues.
- Increase productivity by ensuring smooth network performance.
There are a variety of network performance monitoring solutions on the market, such as Obkio Network Performance Monitoring software, that monitor your network for you and alert you if there are any upcoming or existing network issues. Network performance monitoring with a software like Obkio is more than just device monitoring, like with traditional monitoring solutions. Obkio can pinpoint network issues anywhere along your network path for complete end-to-end monitoring. This is crucial with the increasing use of SaaS and SD-WAN infrastructures.
- Determine if your Network is the Culprit
As soon as application or internet slowdowns begin, everyone is quick to blame their network. While the network is often the culprit of problems like laggy video or slow internet performance, often doesn’t mean always.
To optimize network performance, you need to understand if your network is actually experiencing interruptions or delays, and if so, what the problem is and where it is located.
So many of us have gotten into a game of back and forth with different service providers all pointing the finger at each other. No one wants the problem to be on their side, mostly because no one has the proper tools to pinpoint the issues. Network performance monitoring allows you to monitor different ends of your network to clearly identify the responsibility of the various groups involved in delivering a given service.
- Be Notified of Network Issues
The easiest way to be proactive when it comes to network performance is to react as soon as your network performance begins to suffer.
Most network performance monitoring solutions allow you to set up alerts as soon as a network problem occurs, or when there’s a sign of any network performance degradation. That way, you can quickly find and fix problems before they affect users.
It’ll help you optimize network performance in the long-run, because you can monitor network performance and collect data, but if you don’t react as soon as a problem occurs, none of that matters.
- Create A Performance Baseline
It’s difficult to know what good or bad network performance looks like without a comparison point.
Network performance monitoring allows you to collect network performance data over time to create a baseline for what good performance looks like, so you can easily compare performance over time to your ideal level. The more you optimize your network, the better your baseline level will be.
It’s also important to compare network performance between different parts of your network to know whether performance is consistent, or if it’s worse in certain locations and why. Compare network performance between your head quarters, data center, remote office, and cloud infrastructures, like AWS or Azure.
- Don’t Stop Optimizing
No matter how efficiently you optimize your network performance today, networks don’t stay perfectly optimized forever. As you add new applications and users, upgrade devices, and meet new customer demands, your network will fall behind if it doesn’t grow with you.
Great network performance requires continuous monitoring and maintenance. Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, network performance monitoring tools will monitor network performance for you and remind you to keep putting in the work to optimize your network, the same way you optimize business practices.
In Conclusion
Network performance monitoring helps you optimize network performance by reminding you to keep Auditing, Troubleshooting, and Continuously Monitoring to make your network better, as the demands on your network increase.
So as your business keeps growing and changing, make sure to refer back to this list, and start the process over again. Your users will thank you!