The beginning of the year is a suitable time to look back at the planning made in the last year to be implemented this year. Is upgrading your IT infrastructure on the list? If so, the article Network Infrastructure Upgrade Guide was created for you.
Before executing the procurement of the device, it is worth seeing signs that your network infrastructure is worthy of an upgrade. What are the signs?
- Employees at your company take a long time when carrying out a job.
Modern work systems expect a work environment that can be accessed from anywhere, but mobile solutions and cloud-based business applications can overwhelm legacy infrastructure resources. An infrastructure upgrade to a modern network can make a drastic difference to employee productivity.
- Your network is 11x slower than it should be.
The old infrastructure was not built to support the demands of today’s technology. Modern wired and wireless infrastructure allows you to work anywhere at the highest speed. For example there are now access points that can theoretically provide speeds of up to 6.9 Gbps. That’s 11.5 times faster than the previous generation. And with Multigigabit technology, for example, you can get speeds in excess of 1 Gbps on existing Cat5e cables.
- Your IT manager spends a lot of time managing and troubleshooting your network.
Implementing new technology puts more strain on the old infrastructure which then needs more attention. Your business cannot grow, let alone innovate, if your IT manager is forced to spend most of his time and resources managing and troubleshooting network problems.
- You experience “I think the security is good”.
The threats to networks will be more sophisticated than ever before. The older your infrastructure is, the more prone to unwanted things are.
Have you experienced the 4 signs? If so, then this is a good time to upgrade the network infrastructure. However, before deciding to upgrade there are several considerations that you should know so that the budget for upgrading this is not in vain.
- Providing Room for
Growth A successful infrastructure upgrade is not just focused on the present. The best strategy for investing in network infrastructure is to assume it will be used for the next 4-5 years. So if you don’t buy equipment that is designed to handle growing your business in the next few years, it will only lead to unnecessary purchases in the next year or two. The extra expenses up front can prevent much higher expenses later on.
- Making a Network Map
A good network map with complete inventory records is a major requirement before deciding on an infrared network upgrade. Put simply, you won’t be able to draw a picture for the future if you don’t have a picture of your current network. So before doing anything else, make sure your entire network is well documented and includes any changes that have been made recently.
- Planning for Subnet Breaking
There is no reason to configure your entire network as one giant network. Breaking the network into several access groups can solve several problems at once:
- User access can be controlled by moving critical systems to their own subnetworks with a higher security configuration.
- You can perform network optimization manually. By assigning users with different subnets, it will pass through different routers and servers in order to even out the traffic load for each device.
- It’s easy to set up a guest-only network for casual web browsing, such as when a client is visiting. Which keeps them blocked from your main business network.
There are many more problems that can be solved by solving the subnet. Therefore planning for subnet splitting is one of the most important points when you want to upgrade your network infrastructure.
- Identifying Bottlenecks
Some high usage areas are one of the biggest problems when it comes to network maintenance, especially on Wi-Fi based networks. It’s a good idea to check your server logs right away and see if the workload is properly divided across each device. If you find that some points receive a traffic load many times greater than other points, then this is a green light to quickly optimize your network equipment. You can contact a reliable network partner to create a heat map that provides guidance on where the access point should be located.
- Creating a Policy for Employee Personal Devices
If employees at your company are used to bringing their own mobile devices to work, this can certainly be a huge advantage for productivity. However, this creates three main issues to consider when it comes to implementing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).
- With more devices, bandwidth requirements will also increase.
- Employees will need cloud-based storage space approved by the company.
- Access and security settings should be standardized across operations.
So, those are some important points when you want to upgrade your network infrastructure. If you are still having trouble, you can use an IT consultant and manage services to get optimal performance. contact us here yes.
