Tracking and cracking network performance problems is no easy task. More than a matter of identifying often mystifying bottlenecks, ensuring network efficiency requires an almost preternatural understanding of your organization's IT operations, as well as a thick skin for withstanding the heat when problems inevitably arise.
To keep your network humming, we've outlined 10 areas where tweaking and moderate investment can lead to significant performance gains. After all, as more and more organizations seek to conduct business at wire speed, making sure your systems blaze is essential to the competitive edge your organization needs.
Performance tip No. 1: Speed up that WAN
IT has long been caught in the web of leased lines and costly WAN charges. Linking multiple sites with T1 lines, MPLS, and even Frame Relay used to be the only way to guarantee connectivity, but the scene has changed. Rather than curse at your monthly WAN bill, it's high time to investigate your alternatives.
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Cogent Communications is one of several providers boasting a significant fiber footprint around the United States. Tapping these outlets might mean a substantial increase in site-to-site bandwidth at a significant cost savings -- it's all a matter of location. Even bringing a few sites into a new WAN design can save enough money to increase bandwidth to the sites that aren't accessible by the same carrier.
You may wind up running your own VPN between these sites, but if the carrier's SLA is strong enough and the network is as low-latency as it should be, this won't be an issue. Think of the benefits of 100Mbps across all your sites and a WAN bill downsized by half.
Sites outside the footprint of the larger carriers, and thus destined to remain on leased-line connections for the foreseeable future, could benefit from a WAN accelerator, such as Riverbed's Steelhead appliance (see the InfoWorld Test Center's hands-on review of Riverbed Steelhead). If you can't increase bandwith to those satellite sites, your only option is to decrease traffic on those circuits without reducing their efficacy. That's where WAN optimization tools come in.
Performance tip No. 2: Lose the leased lines
Unless you're headquartered in the Sahara, it's time to ditch leased-line Net access. Between Time Warner Business Class, Comcast Business Class, and FiOS, there's bound to be a better, cheaper way to bring high-speed Internet into your environment. A ten-fold Internet bandwidth increase in place of existing T1 circuits is not out of the realm of possibility and can be achieved for a fraction of the cost without compromising reliability.
Granted, T1 and T3 leased lines provide more of a guarantee against latency, but the cost differential is extraordinary, and the maturity of these networks -- especially the business-class products -- has grown substantially. It's time to tell your telco to pull its SmartJacks and bring in something better.
Slow Internet access is always a major complaint among users. Bringing them the same relative speed they get at home goes a long way toward appeasing the masses.
