How to Optimize Network Performance

A poorly performing network can cost your business in

A POORLY PERFORMING NETWORK more ways than one. Dealing with a slow network means

CAN COST YOUR BUSINESS IN MORE that calls are dropped, files take longer to send, applications
take longer to load, and productivity plummets as users
WAYS THAN ONE wait around for tasks to get completed. That’s why knowing
how to optimize network performance is crucial to your
business’s everyday success.
Optimizing network performance is all about being proactive — because proactivity leads to productivity.
The faster you catch network problems, the faster you can solve them and everything can go back to working
smoothly.

A network that is performing as it should is one that can sustain the demands of users, applications, and
business requirements. 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.

Keep reading to learn 5 simple tips for optimizing network performance, which will help you optimize your
company’s overall performance!

1. Monitor Network Performance

How do you know if your network is performing as it should be? Well, you’ll never hear about it.

Complaints about slow loading times or laggy video calls are a sure sign that your network may not be
performing at an optimal level. Once network problems have reached users, though, you’re already behind
on finding and fixing the issues.

That’s why the most important part of optimizing network performance is being proactive about it.

Network performance monitoring (or NPM) is the end-to-end monitoring of network performance to identify
network performance issues that are affecting end users and customers — even if those network problems
reside outside of your local network infrastructure.

Continuously monitoring network performance allows you to:

• Continuously test your network for performance degradation.

• Proactively identify network issues before they affect users.

• Quickly troubleshoot problems and find solutions using data about problem cause and location.

• Collect data and create a performance baseline.

• Increase productivity by ensuring everything is running smoothly.

Don’t let your users be your monitoring system. There are a variety of network performance monitoring
solutions on the market that will monitor your network for you and alert you if any network degradation
occurs.

2
2. Determine When the Network Is at Fault

Most network administrators have experienced this a lot; as soon as things start to slow down, everyone is
quick to point the finger at the 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 diagnose the issue.

That’s why it’s important to monitor different ends of your network and strategic network locations to clearly
identify which of the various groups involved in delivering a given service should accept responsibility. By
pinpointing the source of the problem quickly and irrefutably, it compels the responsible group to take any
necessary corrective measures.

3. Get Alerted of Network Issues

The easiest way to be proactive when it comes to network performance is to know immediately when
something has gone wrong and to act on it. You can monitor network performance and collect data, but if
you don’t react as soon as a problem occurs, none of that matters.

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 network performance degradation. That way, you can quickly find and fix
problems before they affect users.

By addressing performance issues quickly, it’ll help you optimize network performance in the long run,
because you’ll be more prepared for future problems, and more likely to be on the lookout for any recurrence.

4. Compare Network Performance

You never really know how good you’ve got it until you know how much worse it can get.

This is true with network performance. It’s difficult to know what good or bad network performance looks
like without a comparison point.

3
Continuously monitoring network performance and collecting performance data over time allows you to
create a baseline of what good performance looks like, so you can easily compare performance over time
to your ideal level. The more you optimize your network, the more your “good” performance level increases!

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 headquarters, data centers, remote offices, and cloud
infrastructures (like AWS or Azure). Setting up monitoring agents at these different locations will do the
comparison for you, and help you prioritize which network locations need to be optimized, and where your
network is underperforming.

5. Update Your Network

A network should grow with you. As your business grows, it creates more demands on your network. With
every new application, location, and user, your network gets more and more responsibility added to its plate.

It’s therefore ridiculous to think that the same network infrastructure you had for a company of 10 employees
can sustain a company of 100.

While you should definitely do your due diligence and seek out solutions first, the truth is that networks do
wear out, and sometimes they need replacing. So if you’re still running on old cabled Internet, it’s an easy bet
to say that a new wired connection could solve a lot of your problems.

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 encounter new customer
demands, your network will fall behind if it doesn’t grow with you.

Efficient, high-performing networks require continuous monitoring and maintenance. Fortunately, as

mentioned earlier, there are network performance monitoring solutions around that 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. Network performance monitoring isn’t just about optimizing; in fact, the
three most important network performance use cases are Auditing, Troubleshooting, and Continuous
Monitoring.

So as your business keeps growing and changing, make sure to refer back to this list, and do the steps all
over again. Your users will thank you.