Managing a network infrastructure to get the most out of your data and help maximize employee time is knowing how everything works separately and, most importantly, together. From switches to servers and everything in between you need to understand not only the big picture, but the intricacies of each device on your network.

Throwing money at a network that is sluggish and unreliable should never be the first choice to solve the problem. In today’s world there can be many reasons why your network is not performing as you expect. Taking a little time to understand what can cause network bottlenecks will save you time and money down the road. You can also consult with a trusted professional, such as Taylored Systems, to provide you with guidance into troubleshooting the problem.

A Closer Look at How to Find Network Bottlenecks

Without taking a close look of the fundamental causes, the bottlenecks are unlikely to go away regardless of how much money you throw at them. The key to really solving the issue of course, is to know the appropriate places to look. Although there is a staggering variety of them, some kinds of network bottlenecks are both more common and more pressing than others.

Misappropriated Applications

Anything that runs on the network will affect its efficiency and software that uses the network inefficiently will cause serious degradation to the overall performance of your environment.

Software programmers do not always keep your network in mind during development. When your network seems unreliable and congested at seemingly random intervals, check how applications are used on your network. You may find a situation like an application database being used inefficiently because it’s copying over the whole database every time a single file is updated.

Security, Security, Security

There are very real dangers when the security of your network is not understood or properly configured. Besides the obvious risks to your data, lack of proper security can have a noticeable impact on your network infrastructure. With the varying amounts of spyware, malware, and viruses in today’s environment, your network can suffer. If any devices on your network are infected and constantly reporting back to the source, you will not only find that your network is suffering, but the private information on your network is being compromised.

Mismanaged Servers

Servers are the beginning and the end of data that flows throughout your network. You need to understand what you expect each server to accomplish and plan accordingly.

Perform routine checks to make sure that each server is optimally performing what you would expect it to do. Check that the internal network and storage devices the servers on your network use are configured to perform up to their expectations. This will save you many sleepless nights.

Storage Solutions

In today’s world of virtualization, attached storage is being used more often than not. With NAS (Network Attached Storage) and SAN (Serial Attached Storage) you can maximize your capital and create a flexible environment, but only if configured properly. When you have a group of servers all using the same storage device, any misconfigured storage device can act as a bottleneck to the data users are trying to access.

Check that your storage device can handle the amount of reads and writes that are being requested, because while it may seem to be a network issue, it may just be that your server cannot access the data quickly enough from the storage device.

Primary Culprit in Network Bottleneck Detection

Network bottle detection can be a very frustrating experience. Understanding how your network infrastructure works separately and as a whole is the first step in troubleshooting performance bottlenecks. Then you can begin to find whether your issues should be fixed through better management practices or by upgrading hardware.

With that being said, the biggest culprit to bottlenecks in a network is the lack of proactive administration. Before you go on a spending spree, know what’s happening on the network you have. There are many tools to help understand where the traffic is coming from and going to. You cannot understand your network unless you know how it is performing, and that should be what guides your decisions.

Taylored Systems can help you troubleshoot existing problems within your environment and also proactively help manage your infrastructure to ensure the performance of your network is optimally configured and monitored to prevent downtime for your business.