Think of your business’s network infrastructure as a huge motorway that your critical data travels along. Wide highways with multiple lanes can distribute traffic evenly and in turn get everyone to their destination faster. In contrast, bottlenecks constrain traffic to just one lane. They can slow vehicles down considerably, if not bring them to a complete stop.
Much the same thing happens when your network becomes too congested to handle the current volume of traffic—it sends your company’s data flow grinding to a halt.
Network bottlenecks are more than just frustrating inconveniences for singular users. They can disrupt communications across your organisation and hinder your operations. The worst-case scenario? They might even take your whole network out of commission. The resulting downtime can cost you a lot in terms of lost productivity and repair costs. You might even find yourself staring down some reputational damage should the outage compromise your customer service.
Fortunately, your business has nothing to fear with Network Edge in your corner. We’re here to walk you through the process of identifying and addressing bottlenecks in your company network’s infrastructure so that you can enjoy smooth and uninterrupted connectivity all day, every day. Let’s get right to the issue of bottlenecks in your network infrastructure:
Congestion happens when there’s more demand for data transmission on a network than it can currently handle. This can happen for many reasons, including:
You and your team will probably feel the effects of a network bottleneck right away in the form of perceptible slowdowns and even total outages. A more systematic approach to pinpointing bottlenecks, however, will set you on the right track to resolving them. Try the following steps first:
Deploy monitoring tools to get a real-time view of your network. Keep an eye out for sudden spikes in traffic and latency or packet loss on key network paths. These tools should also be able to tell you which of your network devices, such as routers and switches, are operating near or at capacity.
Check which users, devices, or applications are consuming the most bandwidth. You might see certain endpoints or services overusing bandwidth, or extreme saturation at specific times of day. An excess of traffic unrelated to your business activities, like personal file sharing and video streaming, can also be behind incidents of network congestion.
Inspect performance metrics on routers, switches, firewalls, and access points. High CPU or memory usage is a common red flag, as are overloaded ports, failed interfaces, and queuing or dropped packets on key devices. Look at device logs and SNMP traps for error messages or alerts that may indicate trouble spots.
Examine the overall network design to spot structural weaknesses. Networks with inefficient routing paths or “flat” unsegmented networks are prone to congestion. You can also check if too much traffic is passing through a single switch or uplink.
Bottlenecks sometimes stem from how applications interact with the network. You might notice, for example, that certain applications consistently perform poorly, or particular services timeout or lag under load. Use synthetic transaction testing or application performance monitoring (APM) tools to isolate where delays occur and pinpoint if the issue lies with the client, server, or network.
Performance bottlenecks are ultimately a sign that some part of your network infrastructure could benefit from repairs or upgrades. Here’s what you can do to deal with them:
If your business is expanding rapidly, chances are it’s also processing a growing volume of data that may eventually become too much for older networking equipment to handle. Devices like legacy routers and access points may not be fast or powerful enough to provide you with the bandwidth you need or support modern applications. It might be the perfect time to invest in newer, high-performance hardware so that your network can handle the increased traffic loads without slowing down.
A flat network design funnels all traffic through the same pathways. This only increases the chance of congestion. Segment the network—using VLANs, for example—to send voice, video, and other types of traffic along separate lanes. This improves performance and makes it easier to contain problems when they occur. Segmenting also enhances security by isolating sensitive systems from general access.
Not all traffic is equally important. You can apply Quality of Service (QoS) settings to prioritise time-sensitive or mission-critical traffic such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, video conferencing, or cloud applications. On the flipside, you can also use these settings to throttle or deprioritise non-essential, bandwidth-heavy services and prevent them from interfering with your company’s operations. Monitor peak usage times so that you have a clear idea of when it’s best to reschedule heavy tasks like backups.
Load balancers are designed to distribute incoming network traffic across multiple servers and thereby prevent any single server or network link from becoming a choke point. These are particularly useful if your business employs a distributed team or works with clients all over the world. Consider deploying your services across multiple data centres or cloud regions to further improve access speed and resilience.
Programs that generate excessive background traffic or send frequent status updates can tie up resources unnecessarily. Optimise these applications where you can. You might also replace them with more efficient alternatives if it seems more cost-effective to do so. In some cases, implementing local caching for frequently accessed files or web content can also ease the load on your WAN or internet connection.
Don’t let bottlenecks keep your teams from doing their best work. Reach out to us at the first sign of an issue. We’ll gladly help you root out the problem and make the necessary structural improvements.
