10 Steps To Improve Your Office’s Network Performance

Dealing with a slow office network prone to crashing is highly frustrating. Many businesses and organizations rely on network performance.

Poor network performance means packet loss, files taking forever to send, and applications like virtual desktop infrastructure or internet protocol becoming harder to use.

Besides making workers visibly frustrated, network congestion and poor internet connection speed translate into monetary losses. As a result, businesses lose time and money and may try to fix the issue through unnecessary network upgrades that don’t work.

10 Steps To Improve Your Office’s Network Performance

This guide will explore ten expert steps that can help you improve your network performance and data packets. Then, call a cybersecurity company in the Bay Area for the best results!

Determine if your network is the issue

Your first step includes finding out if your network is the issue. Many factors affect the performance of a network, and it can be easy to blame network issues on your network itself. However, sometimes the problem might be with your computers or other digital devices.

Before upgrading your overall network architecture, ensure your devices aren’t the problem. You can also look at individual network devices or network hardware. For example, you may need to upgrade a router instead of replacing your entire network.

Reconfiguring your setup can eliminate network congestion

Your network’s overall setup can also affect network traffic. When installing an update, ensure the process properly configures your devices. Additionally, the distance between hardware can also have a significant impact on network speed.

For the best network connection, devices should be at most thirty feet apart. Reconfiguring your network’s setup can fix many performance issues, letting you avoid upgrading to expensive network services.

Upgrade your software and hardware

Applying new updates to optimize network performance and prevent packet loss is critical. However, you may still notice issues like poor router performance or slow networking software.

It might be time for replacements if you still experience data packet loss after updating your hardware and programs. Old technology can’t keep up with the demands of many modern businesses.

In particular, your network setup can have many parts and software, including:

• Routers
• Cables
• Switches
• Networking software
• Wireless protocols
• Security and operating systems

Use a guest network

Employees or visitors doing activities like streaming Netflix can impact your overall network performance and service quality. Provide a guest network with available bandwidth allocated for visitors or employees during their downtime.

You save valuable network bandwidth by providing a guest network for more effective network performance.

Educate your users

If providing a guest network isn’t an option or doesn’t work, you can also educate your employees or team members on their data usage.

Throughout the day, your employees will have some downtime. During this time, they may decide to stream YouTube or other applications that can suck up precious traffic data.

Educate your employees on how their actions can impact network performance. Educating your employees means they’ll be more likely to pursue activities that won’t compromise data speed.

Additionally, work-related behaviors can also cause network disruption. For instance, multiple employees sending emails with huge PowerPoint attachments can affect network performance metrics.

Instead, encourage employees to use the cloud to share files and teach them how to compress huge files. Other activities can also help, like scheduling backups when there’s far less traffic.

While this action will still take away network data, it will result in better network throughput during a hectic workday.

Find creative ways to prevent data loss

Restructuring specific ways you run the office can also improve your network metrics. For example, many companies either work fully remotely or use a hybrid model. For communication, these companies will use applications like Zoom for video calls.

However, video calling can significantly strain your network performance and data packets. Therefore, limit your virtual meetings and determine times when an email works just as well as a video call.

Scan for any defects or viruses

Defects or viruses can also impact your data quality and slow a network. Certain viruses will greatly degrade performance and quickly harm your network’s infrastructure. Malware may even control your applications or programs.

Having an IT specialist routinely inspect your network and hardware is good practice. They can find and eliminate malware or check for defects like ruptured cables.

Consider using VLANs for any low-priority traffic

VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) make great tools to separate or partition vital network resources. Using a VLAN, you can ensure that the most critical areas in your office or business obtain the greatest priority.

A VLAN acts similarly to a separate network, allowing maximum throughput. However, you won’t need to add another network which can require rewiring the entire office. Instead, segment your VLAN based on the different devices you have, functions required, departments, etc.

Network performance monitoring

Measuring network performance serves as a powerful tool for determining the quality of your underlying computer network and its operating systems. When you measure network performance, you can measure your network latency monitor and how it takes to send and collect data.

Gain a complete understanding of your system when you measure network performance. A network performance measurement can also identify bandwidth patterns.

Measure network performance with a cybersecurity team

Finally, you can’t go wrong with an expert cybersecurity team regarding the proper network performance measurement. Cybersecurity and IT specialists study network statistics to help catch a problem before it happens.

Besides monitoring performance and whether your latency affects throughput, they provide many more services. They can help protect your networks from cyberattacks or malware with measures like:

• Data encryption
• Authentication
• Intrusion detection
• Virus prevention and more

Get Your Network Performance Measurement Today From Renascence IT Consulting

When you call Renascence IT Consulting, you can improve your network performance and prevent packet loss. Our team can prevent packet loss, take the stress off your network administrator, and strengthen network metrics.

Our services can also help protect your data integrity and prevent hacks. Discover the consequences of a data breach by calling Renascence IT Consulting at (510) 552-6896!