Does your network reach capacity at similar times every day? If so, before you decide to add more bandwidth at additional cost, think about adjusting traffic patterns at no cost.
As a first step, consider using a network monitoring tool to baseline the most common time periods when your network is at capacity. With this critical information, you can take some pro-active steps to optimize your network traffic.
Move maintenance tasks such as back-ups, updates, source control synchronization and large file transfers to off peak periods to decrease the load on the network.
If you can’t alter the timeline for maintenance tasks, encourage users to schedule bandwidth intensive tasks (video teleconferencing and webcasts) that are not time sensitive to business operations to off peak periods. Most users want the best possible viewing experience and will appreciate being able to schedule online events to take advantage of improved network availability.
Of course, if you don’t have flexibility to adjust traffic patterns to optimize the network, it may be time to add more bandwidth.
Showing posts with label Optimizing bandwidth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Optimizing bandwidth. Show all posts
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Looking to Reduce IT Costs…Optimize Network Traffic
In these days of pinching pennies and saving dimes, the best way to help your organization is to find ways to reduce costs. Do you know which network resources are costing you the most? Answering this question can lead to optimizing network traffic and cutting costs.
For instance, the cost of LAN traffic within your office is usually fairly affordable, however, once the packets hit the WAN, the price tag increases significantly.
You can use Netflow to identify which network resources are adding the most to your monthly bill. Start monitoring the circuits that make up the majority of your high cost list with Netflow and you might find some network efficiencies that lead to savings that have a big financial impact.
To find cost savings, I use a network management tool, dopplerVUE, that has a bandwidth locator that sorts and finds top bandwidth users in networks. dopplerVUE provides Netflow support to give you multiple ways to view traffic in your network.
If you want more details on where all your traffic is going and how to configure Netflow to give you the answers, check out this recent post.
For instance, the cost of LAN traffic within your office is usually fairly affordable, however, once the packets hit the WAN, the price tag increases significantly.
You can use Netflow to identify which network resources are adding the most to your monthly bill. Start monitoring the circuits that make up the majority of your high cost list with Netflow and you might find some network efficiencies that lead to savings that have a big financial impact.
To find cost savings, I use a network management tool, dopplerVUE, that has a bandwidth locator that sorts and finds top bandwidth users in networks. dopplerVUE provides Netflow support to give you multiple ways to view traffic in your network.
If you want more details on where all your traffic is going and how to configure Netflow to give you the answers, check out this recent post.
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