What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
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If a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate (for example one of the organization’s applications can only handle 10 concurrent users at a time), the impact could be immense if the application is for clients, and clients are unable to use the application effectively (or at all) due to poor performance.
To determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate, there are a number of network tests that could be run against the network to measure response times, packet loss, timeouts, etc.
Hi Andrew, I agree and believe it is very important to have tested a network very thoroughly to it’s maximum capacity in order to determine if it is sufficient enough to support it’s users. A great note to mind is to be aware of the bandwidth and throughput of the network in order to alleviate such traffic from occurring or packet loss to prevent any downtime from production.
Hello Andrew, Adequately said.
Stress testing is the primary approach for determining network adequacy and capability. A properly conducted stress test will reveal a network’s response time based on the available bandwidth for data management. In addition, the test result indicates the network or subnetworks’ capacity to manage outgoing and incoming traffic (load capability) adequately. i.e., network speed and response time compared to the number of users within a specific activity period.
Networks are the lifeline of an organization. The impacts of inadequate network capacity include interruption to business operations (i.e., slowed traffic). For example, Temple University must contend with a massive population of students, faculty, and staff all accessing the campus network at the same time. Inadequate network capacity would result in students not being able to work on assignments. Faculty would be unable to access canvas, and staff unable to perform their daily tasks (billing, student financial aid). It would be catastrophic if the network crashed due to the influx of activity around the end of the semester. To prevent a network outage like this, Temple has load balancers to ensure traffic can flow without overloading a particular server and impacting operations.
To determine whether the network’s capacity is adequate or inadequate, network engineers would need to monitor the traffic via a network diagnostic tool such as Wireshark to ensure no packets are lost or help determine the cause of failure.
Hi Kelly,
Companies are notorious for being cut throat for having as close to 100% uptime as possible. As even just falling into a percent below 99% jeopardizes much more than a 1% revenue loss for the company. I just liked your example because I imagined that if this did actually happen to Temple in would also cause wide-spread reputation loss for incoming students. Imagine applying to colleges and the friend a year above you tells you how he was late on his presentation and lost 12% of their presentation because their network went down.
12% of their grade**
Hello Kelly, the Temple University analogy is very on point.
In the absence of an adequate network, processes and procedures are delayed, allowing additional network security risks to evolve. I.e., A DDOS attack overwhelms a network with data packets that prevents it from handling its legitimate activities, leaving way for other compromises to occur at the back end. Furthermore, an outage will happen once the network’s bandwidth is consecutively overwhelmed with an excessive inflow of data packets from several bots sources.
A network with inadequate capacity may affect the organization’s ability to operate in an effective manner that meets business objectives. For example, a company that has insufficient bandwidth may experience delays when using web applications and sending/receiving files. This slows the pace of work, hinders productivity, and frustrates users. Users that are frustrated may seek out alternative methods to getting their work done, e.g. using non-approved devices, outside networks, etc. This introduces risk since they may not have the same protections as the corporate network.
The adequacy of the network should be determined by the business objectives and requirements of the industry. For example, a video production company will likely require more bandwidth than a marketing firm, given the type of work that happens. Video files are typically much larger and use more bandwidth when distributed. Industry specific requirements may force companies to store data on premise which determines the design of the network. Accessing the data must align with user needs or else they may not be able to complete their work. For example, high availability architecture may be required so that users can access data without interruption during planned maintenance. Frequent downtime, poor performance, and other barriers to access are indicators of inadequate network design and capacity.
Hi Mathew,
Admittedly, I agree with you in regard to your analysis on insufficient bandwidth may delay web application ,receiving and sending email. However, there are many causes of poor network performance. Some network problems can arise from faulty hardware, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and even from unexpected usage patterns, like network bandwidth spikes, changes in app configuration, or security breaches. Experiencing a network problem is frustrating, and left unattended, it can be disastrous for your business network. That’s why it’s important to understand what can go wrong with your network and to continuously monitor network performance to quickly identify and fix network problems as soon as they arise
High network availability is certainly regarded as a mission-critical requirement within huge enterprise and service provider networks. Network managers face increasing challenges to providing higher availability, including unscheduled down time, lack of expertise, insufficient tools, complex technologies, business consolidation, and competing markets. Capacity and performance management helps network managers achieve new world business objectives and consistent network availability and performance.. However, lack of adequate network capacity may contribute hugely to an organization’s capacity to perform effectively and efficiently way to ensure sustainability of an organizational strategy and objectives. For example, a company that has poor internet network may somewhat experience huge delays in processing application, receiving and sending emails using internet . And this might affect the production and productivity of the organizational performance, which undoubtedly would affect the profitability of the organization in the long run perspective. Network performance measurement tools can be broadly categorized into two types – passive and active. Passive network measurement tools monitor (or measure) existing applications on the network to gather data on performance metrics. This category of tool minimizes network disruption, since no additional traffic is introduced by the tool itself. In addition, by measuring network performance using actual applications, a realistic assessment of the user experience may be obtained. Active networking performance measurement tools generate data that can be tailored to baseline performance using pre-set routines. This testing requires an additive level of data traffic by nature, so it must be scheduled appropriately to minimize impact on existing network traffic .
Finally, one can determine whether an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate by making sure that the optimized network performance is being activated , the most important metrics should be selected for measurement. Many of the parameters included in a comprehensive network performance measurement solution focus on data speed and data quality so as to determine the potency of network performance.
Kofi,
You raise many great points here. I like that you note passive and active monitoring techniques and how these can be used. I also like your example of using real applications to test network performance. I think it’s easy to forget this aspect with automated tools. Using real applications for their intended use case is an important test and may yield insights that weren’t observed elsewhere.
Hi Kofi,
Thank you for providing a complete understanding of network capacity, and I agree with you that the lack of sufficient network capacity may significantly impact an organization’s ability to perform effectively and efficiently. I also believe that employee performance and collaboration efficiency are the most likely outcomes of insufficient network capacity, which is not beneficial to the sustainability of the company. However, I find that I know very little about network monitoring tools and your comment that network performance measurement tools can be broadly divided into two categories, passive and active, is a good idea and provides a new way of thinking about the solution to detecting network capacity. Better detection is to maintain the sustainability of the organization.
Hello Kofi, Well said.
I concur with your analogy wherein you established the links and consequences that would occur due to network inadequacy, i.e., how network outages may affect productivity, touching on the overall profitability of an organization. Honestly, the network is an essential ingredient to comprehensive data management for any organization’s survival.
Secondly, the mention and description of both passive and active network performance measurement tools explain explicitly what and how they improve network performance.
An outage due to insufficient network capacity could pose significant impacts to an organization and their business operations. Organizations rely on their network to transfer data internally as well outbound to the internet to connect and share data with external clients. However, if an outage is caused due to insufficient network capacity then this could impact how an organization shares data internally and externally if proper safeguards are not in place.
To start, it’s important to assess the bandwidth required in order for the organization to operate efficiently to determine if a networks capacity is sufficient. Once the required capacity is established, the organization should identify and inventory business critical systems to ensure they are in high availability. Additionally, for large organizations, load balancing between multiple data centers should be considered to ensure organization availability requirements are sufficient.
Network traffic metrics should be assessed to determine if more or perhaps even less bandwidth is required on a periodic basis. Additionally, periodic testing of applications in high availability and load balancing connections should be performed to determine if an application is meeting resiliency requirements. Additionally, a reassessments of applications in high availability should be performed periodically to determine if any applications should be added or removed.
Hello Bryan,
I like the idea of periodic testing of applications in high availability and load balancing to make sure requirements are being met
Inadequate network capacity directly impacts network performance and results in reduced network bandwidth. If a network is not supported with sufficient bandwidth, it will increase the time required to load a website causing problems with the website’s performance. If an organization hosts a website then it may be unavailable for end users because the maximum data limit was reached that transmits over a network. When maximum capacity of network bandwidth is reached, the network packet cannot be transferred in a timely manner, or it is put in a queue on the router or dropped. If that does not occur, the queue system will retain the packet and cause a bandwidth effect resulting in a failure to set up a new session in the network. Packets are lost or dropped and that result is packet loss. If sessions are dropped and too many packets are lost, all issues of inadequate network directory cause an effect on organization operations, business process etc. It slows down all network performance and causes delays in the organization’s daily work routine. Inadequate network capacity leads to loss of customers and business.
To determine whether network capacity is adequate or not we can check network performance, on real time usage of various websites, such as loading time, video streaming performance, data upload and download speed etc. We can also determine adequacy as a end user in the network’s regular work environment, as well as utilizing various networks performance/ measurement/monitoring tools such as Observim, Nagios, Netflow etc, it useful in determining if the network capacity of organization is adequate or inadequate.
Some impacts of having an inadequate network capacity would include slow internet speeds, web page delays, customer dissatisfaction and customers purchasing with another vendor. An example would be cell phone carriers and the slow network that the customer is on. During peak hours, with so many users in a specific area can slow internet usage, buffer videos and text messages will delay in sending. Customer leaves poor review and negative social media post and then leaves to competing carrier.
How would an organizations network capacity be determined to be adequate or not? I think being able to run tests on the network would be a good starting point. Using the network during peak hours and testing out download speeds/ upload speeds. Video calls and any streaming services. With testing, it can lead to improvement of the organizations network.
Hi Corey,
The customer aspect is very important and one that I overlooked. I focused more on the internal struggles that an organization may focus on, but looking at network capacity from a customer perspective is key to the business. As you said if they are not having a great experience on their end they will leave poor reviews which will hurt the organization. Considering network utilization from both internal and external views is going to be important for future success.
Dhaval,
I agree with you, network utilization from both views is going to be important for future success. When an organization can have a solid network, the customers will be satisfied. If the organization is running slow and the network is inadequate, the business will take a hit.
If the portion of the network is inadequate, then effect the performance of that business and the level of the effect would be determined based on the portion the business that is being affected. If the backbone portion of the network is being affected, then it would affect the entire organization. As they would not be able to access any of the resources within intranet or internet (resources outside of the organization). If there is a small area within the organization is being affected that has a backup team or place that could perform their work, then it would be less affected to the business process.
To determined if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate, we can identify that by evaluating the service that is being provided. If the users are able to access the services, they are trying to access without any disruption to perform their tasks then it would be considered as the network being adequate. If the users are not able to access the resources in the network in a timely manner and if the business process are being effected, then it would be consider as the network is inadequate.
If a portion of a network’s capacity is inadequate, then the company could experience issues that result in loss of productivity or availability. If the issue resides on the company’s intranet, then inadequate network capacity could result in a loss of productivity due to applications working slowly or cease running at all. If the inadequate network capacity resides with the company’s extranet, then that could result in loss of potential revenue due to the customer applications running slowly or not working. For example, if someone is attempting to purchase a product from the organization’s website and it will not load due to high user traffic, then that could result in the customer becoming frustrated and deciding not to purchase that product with the company anymore.
You can determine the adequacy of the network capacity by monitoring the network logs. You can see how much of the available bandwidth is being used on average, if there are any spikes in activity, if certain applications are used more than others etc. There are lots of networking monitoring tools that can be utilized as well that will give the company a reading on their network performance.
Good point on addressing the impact of network capacity on the consumer. Consumers appreciate reliability, and reliability builds trust. The company may think they’re saving money by purchasing less network capacity – but in reality, it could be costing them business!
If a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate, it would affect the company reputation, business critical processes and the loss of their customers. Network allows us to share files, communicate using emails etc… so if it’s not working properly especially within any organization, it would slow employees productivity which will result in company profitability loss. It will also affect its reputation as they won’t be able to deliver fast, secure and reliable information to its customers.
Misconfiguration of a network will lead to its inadequate capacity. As we learned, human error is the vector of most breaches in the information system so a mis-schedule back up, forgotten devices and lack of disaster recovery process can slow down application and performance. It can also cause data usage restrictions on a network port and retransmission on a network path.
Giving access to the right people on a network port is also good for a network capacity as unauthorized access will give people information they are not supposed to know and allow data breaches to happen causing organization to spend more money to fix the issue.
To me, determining if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate would be to hire employees in the IT department that can monitor the system and implement policies and procedures that must be followed by everybody within an organization to avoid network inadequacy. I believe there is also videos streaming performance or systems testing that can provide network capacity results to ensure that IT are taking the steps in case a network interruption happens.
Hi Ornella,
I like your observation that misconfiguration is a big factor that can lead to inadequate capacity on a network. My initial thought when looking at this question was the inadequacy would be due to a lack of resources invested in the infrastructure at a company. It is true that human error is a big contributor in breaches of security, it makes sense it would also be a large contributor here.
Network capacity is the complex measurement of the maximum amount of data that may be transferred between network locations over a network path. If there is a portion of an organization’s network capacity that is inadequate, signal interference could be a factor. Wireless networks send and receive lots of communications to and from devices on a daily basis, but they can also create signal interference that brings down the network performance, even if there is no connection to the network itself. Also, congested or overcrowded network areas are at risk of providing too many signals for the network to manage.
Network capacity planning is critical for top-notch application performance, so keeping all network areas free from congestion, and being aware of any non-connected devices that can interfere with the network.
Increasing reliance on data and performance importance of IT systems makes network capacity essential for organizations. Network capacity is important for an organization to ensure that the network has its resources to prevent an impact on critical applications. It is important that the service and applications are not interrupted because of the capacity issues. It would lead reputation and customer loss. There are various reasons that network capacity might be affected such as: DNS problems, malfunctioning devices, poor connectivity, high bandwidth usage.
Today, organizations differentiate traffic, accelerate applications and connect clients with partners. In order to do that, there should be a policy for network capacity to know when to adjust the traffic and rules should be in place. To decide the network capacity, bandwidth capacity should be checked as well as device capacity. The network capacity can be calculated with monitoring and related testing tools.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
If a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate, this would impact the organization by preventing the organization from achieving its business goals effectively. Many parts of the organization’s process are slowed down, prolonging the business cycle and negatively effecting productivity. Websites and applications won’t run correctly, not only making the process frustrating for the person connected to the network, but also leaving the chance of risk that the person connects to a different network making data vulnerable in the process. You would determine if a network’s capacity is adequate by monitoring the network frequently, recognizing any trends or patterns that are negatively effecting the network, and discuss ways to deal with these trends.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
The impacts due to a inadequate network capacity would vary depending on the function of applications within a network. For example; a normal office space would find using cloud based applications would yield sluggish results or web-based applications ranging from basic youtube or training videos to your groups inability to email or send files/data over the network.
To determine network inadequacy the organization would first have to identify critical infrastructure components such as hardware/routers/switches are and begin collecting networking metrics. Analyzing different components from each network would allow us to segment and then implement different VLANs or load balancing techniques in order to provide quality of service depending on applications are hardware being used by each end user. I believe also breaking down different areas of the organization should have already been implemented at this point; so being able to differentiate requirements for the Research & Development groups opposed to the accounting/financing groups would easier to estimate expected bandwidths by generating a breakdown of each software application requirements and how much they’re being used. Additionally looking into what Ports & Protocols are being utilized inside these groups would give us another idea. In fact; you could go as far as checking firewalls and application whitelists to also record more information – is it acceptable for the standard office user to have access to video streaming sites since these can heavily clog proxies they’re connected to.
Ultimately there are numerous ways to identify network adequacy but varies depending on connected devices.
A lack of availability should be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate. The results would be a congested network with slower speeds in data usage due to high amounts of network traffic.
To understand how much capacity you need, you must calculate the maximum number of users who might be using the network connection simultaneously and multiply that number times the bandwidth capacity required by each application.
Hey Joshua,
That is a one of the great idea to identify to identify the capacity of the network connection needed. Number of users connected to the network does affect the performance level. If the company doesn’t have a networking equipment to support the user that will be connected to the network then it will affect the performance level.
Hi Joshua,
Quantifying the required network capacity is an excellent baseline to use in order to understand how much bandwidth a given network might need based on its userbase and the intensity of its applications. Without enough bandwidth, the availability as you mention will surely plummet, which maybe could result in a breach if an attacker could exploit an MITM attack at this moment.
The network is the most critical factor for effective data utilization within any organization because the crucial mission process of such an organization relies solely on its ability to transmit its data to achieve its goals adequately. Without adequate network capabilities, business operations would be disrupted, leading to catastrophic business consequences. Every organization has set out parameters, i.e., the MTDT, RPO, and RTO, which determine the level of downtime or disruptions an entity could be subjected to before it reaches the level of risk criticality.
When an organization lacks the required bandwidth within its connectivity of devices to manage the level of data being used, particularly from a security perspective, back doors will emerge then become vulnerabilities that could subject the entity to compromise. To determine any network’s adequacy, its subnetworks and other architectural components should be regularly monitored for efficiency by network-specific subject matter experts, i.e., Security Operations Center (SOC) Analysts and Network Administrators. The implementation of a security operations center in one of such controls to ensure adequate network performance.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
Impacts to be expected if an organization’s network capacity is inadequate are relatively endless. The organization should expect an inadequate network capacity to lead to a multitude of potential problems, all resulting in lost revenue and the inability to complete regular business activities for those working in the area affected by the inadequate network capacity. Customers may also be unable to use the website to make purchases if that is an applicable scenario, or they may experience delayed server responses due to the bottlenecked bandwidth. To determine if the network capacity is adequate or not, the total bandwidth and resources needed to sustain the customer base should be calculated. and then regular stress tests should be run to analyze performance expectations for peak usage times to ensure that there will be enough resources on the busiest days. To navigate traffic effectively, load balancers should likely be placed in the network as well to help mitigate bandwidth bottlenecking.
Hello Antonio,
I agree with you in that inadequate network capacity will lead to a countless amount of problems. Network inadequacy will keep an organization from achieving its business goals effectively. Loss of revenue is surely going to happen due to customer delays working with the server. Mitigating bandwidth bottlenecking along with recognizing trends and patterns in the network allow us to deal with this inadequacy.
If a network’s capacity is inadequate, it could cause slow, overloaded internet connections, leading to reductions in productivity. Think about the times in your own family home where you were trying to do something on the internet but your sibling or parent was streaming or downloading something, and the network couldn’t handle any additional tasks on top of that. It leads to frustration and slow connections for other users.
In order to manage the network capacity to an appropriate amount, you need to analyze the traffic on your network. This involves analyzing the network usage of applications, employees, and services. By measuring the usage of these items, you can determine usage rates and an average required network capacity. Make sure you cater to when it hits peak usage as well, to avoid slow downs.
You should also consider the impact of adding new applications, employees, or services to your network. As your company grows, you’ll require more network capacity.
HI Madalyn, great point on the need to continually expand network capacities. Organizations should be growing over time, therefore it is important to prioritize network capacity planning in corporate roadmaps.
Hi Madalyn and Lauren,
I would have to agree with both of you. I’m certain most of us approached this question envisioning a solely on-premise network. However, your point about provisioning the proper resources as an organization grows is a fanstatic point! Networking in the cloud is far better suited for scaling up or down as resources require for this precise reason. We can spin up ALB or other resources to help balance the influx faster than we could with on-prem architecture. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Kelly
Hi Madalyn, I like the family home example you use as far as slow connectivity. For businesses, it would be unfortunate for the company to try and complete an important task online to meet a deadline, but the slow connection (spinning circle) is preventing them from finishing. Traffic analysis is crucial in collecting and processing flow data to help resolve network performance.
Reductions in productivity are not ideal! Comparing the situation to when a user’s home network is down was great! That is very frustrating under any circumstances, whether you have to turn in an assignment or you just want to watch a video on YouTube or Netflix. Internet is an everyday essential now, so whenever it is disrupted or slowed down.. we are greatly inconvenienced, and it then becomes a question of availability. Analyzing the traffic over the network should prove to be helpful as you have pointed out.
An organization with inadequate network capacity would face several issues. For example, critical web-based applications may crash or run very slow, also the more users on the network the slower the speeds and less bandwidth. In addition to this if the organization is growing with users and application/software then inadequate network capacity could hinder that process you would not be able to add additional products or onboard new users due to limited network capacity.
Keeping an eye on network logs and metrics is personally what I have seen be the best tool to determine what an adequate amount might be. By monitoring, you can see if you are close to maxing out on a normal day and what applications are consuming the most resources and make any necessary adjustments.
I liked your approach of basing the analysis off logs and metrics of performance. This ‘data focused’ approach will reflect whether the current network is handling the current load. Keeping an eye on the data is the key to ensuring that the network remains healthy and functioning!
One of the most apparent issues is the impact of performance capabilities. In an organizational network without the proper capacity to support a given number of users, everything from file sharing to downloading patches will be lagged. It is important that organizations properly assess the resources needed to support the number of users on these essential systems. A number of tactics can be used to test network capacity, such as measuring network bandwidth, measuring the rate/number of packets loss during normal operation, and even recording the number of applications on end user devices (which might be taking up bandwidth and slowing operations).
Thanks for sharing Lauren. There are a lot of cool tools organizations can use in order to monitor some of the tactics that you referenced. From my own personal experience I’ve used Solarwinds (luckily the non compromised version) to monitor network bandwidth between some of my organizations data centers. Cacti is another useful tool that helps with monitoring circuit utilization.
Impacts that can be expected due to a an inadequate network capacity could cause high traffic since the bandwidth is too narrow for most of the packets going through the network. Productivity can be affected, and this can also frustrate clients and or employees from trying to perform their day to day operations. A good rule of thumb to test for good network capacity is to measure bandwidth and throughput at its maximum number of users with tools such as solar winds,net perf, or netcps. By being able to test the network at it’s full capacity for a prolonged period time it will give a good indication of whether or not it can handle all its users plus any other expected traffic that may come along.
Wilmer,
I think that your point of testing a network at its full capacity for a prolonged period of time is important when it comes to analyzing the capacity of a network. A network may not need more resources if it performs slightly worse than average during its top 1% traffic time, but if network interruption is a common theme over an extended period of time, the network capacity needs to be revised.
-Mike
I agree with your suggestions, Wimer. but times, But at times, the problem is that are using old equipment to run new programs that require more power and processing capacities than the old equipment can ha
As time and technology have evolved, the network has become an important part of our lives. the performance of IT systems and the increasing human reliance on data means that shortfalls in the network can lead to expensive business costs. Limited network size is most likely to lead to latency if parts of the organization’s network have insufficient capacity, with the consequence of increased packet loss. First, insufficient network capacity can lead to increased time needed to carry out activities and less efficient employee performance and collaboration. Secondly, it can have a significant impact on the completeness and timely effectiveness of data collection, preventing effective use of data and access to it. Ultimately, this can result in an organization’s operational capacity, which can affect its sustainability.
First, it can be regularly checked by professional network monitoring tools, which can accurately assess the current network capacity through professional measurement tools. The resulting assessment report is then used to make corrections and reduce the high risk of insufficient network capacity. However, a key problem with this approach is the cost, as professional measurement tools require high cost of development and maintenance. Secondly, the network capacity problem can be improved by increasing the amount of user questionnaires to understand the sense of user experience through real customer responses.
I agree with your approach, and I believe that the current network capacity can be accurately assessed with professional measurement tools. The resulting assessment report can then be used to make corrections and reduce the high risk of insufficient network capacity.
Inadequate capacity planning can lead to loss of customers and business. Overcapacity can deplete a company’s resources and discourage investment in more profitable ventures.
To determine bandwidth requirements, first look at how many people are expected to be using Internet services simultaneously. This can easily include every employee in the organization, especially if they have multiple devices that can be used to access the Internet.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
In this day and time I believe it is safe to say most businesses are counting on their network to run smoothly in order for their business operations to work as planned. If the network capacity is inadequate we can expect packet loss issues, network intermittence, slow applications etc Which that leads to negative impact on business operations as employees are not able to do their jobs in a timely manner or at all in some cases, which that leads ultimately to customer dissatisfaction, which can in the end lead to the downfall of the business, so having adequate network capacity is very very important.
The 1st step determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate is to get an understanding of the organizations daily operation, this can give a starting point and general idea of what is going to be needed. A network monitor tool will be needed to measure exactly what is being used for business operations, yes it can be a good thing to have more than enough, but we also do not want to over spend on network resources that are not being utilized.
Hi Jason,
I liked the fact you started your comment with addressing the importance of network for today’s business and their operations. It is crucial that organizations are able to run things smooth and without problem to keep their efficiency at maximum and not affect their reputation. As you also said, daily operations and IT functions that company uses important to understand first place. The measurement and KPIs should be in place to control the capacity and efficiency of the network in order to understand.
Network capacity is the amount of traffic that a network can handle at any given time, such as internet usage, phone calls, and data speeds. Thus, you could expect a lot of negative impacts on an organization if the network capacity is inadequate. For example, if a network is unable to run at capacity than operations will be negatively affected, which could lead to poor business operations, employee inefficiency, and even a loss of customers. In order to determine if an organization’s network is adequate or inadequate, operating teams may utilize network capacity planning, which allows for the organization to to identify potential shortcomings and misconstrues that could affect a network’s availability or output within a predicted time frame.
If a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate, I would expect slow response times when trying to access internal and/or external resources on the network, slow customer support response times (due to increase in demand and lack of network capacity), and a decrease in customer and employee satisfaction. For example, customers may be fed-up when they are trying to purchase a rare item on an online streetwear or sneaker website and then call customer support, who is also annoyed due to the network issues, high influx of calls, and having to answer the same questions over and over again.
I would determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate by first analyzing what the core functions of the business are and how much network usage all the different processes require, and also compare this to other organizations of similar size within the same industry. In addition, I would monitor the amount of network resources being used during higher than average periods of traffic and revise the previously established maximum network capacity and resources if more are needed. Lastly, I would employ network monitoring tools so that the network analysis could be as in-depth as possible, and could pinpoint the areas of maximum strength and weakness.
The performance of IT systems and increasing reliance on data, means that inadequacies within a network can lead to expensive business costs. A network adapter is responsible for communicating with other computers through the network. If the adapter starts malfunctioning, then it can cause trouble for the entire network (by broadcasting junk data packets). In the worst-case scenario, it can bring down the entire network. Also, if you choose a low bandwidth in the beginning, but your online work increases over time, then your old bandwidth will be unable to handle the new demand and cause a systems slowdown. To determine the adequacy or otherwise, I would suggest series of testing that includes setting up network monitoring continuously monitor network performance using an end-to-end solution.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
Inadequate network resources will result in a negative impact to business operations. Applications will not perform as expected and end users will not be able to complete their tasks. If voice traffic is carried on the network, then communications can be negatively impacted too.
I would measure the utilization of the network circuits feeding to/from the internet or between offices/sites in an organization’s WAN. The utilization of those circuits should be below 75-80% in order to allow for bursts that might occur.
What impacts could be expected if a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate? How would you determine if an organization’s network capacity is adequate or inadequate?
If a portion of an organization’s network capacity is inadequate, impacts can happen to the organization and business operations. The network lets us send emails in and out of the organization, share files with clients and to our colleagues. For example, an outage can happen due to a failed network capacity. I had experience at work where ShareFile had an outage and I could not work on the information the client gave to me. However, it postponed the audit by a few days and that caused an impact on everyone involved within the audit.
The network traffic would have to be monitored by network engineers. This will determine whether there was any failure or any suspicious activity. However, a policy should be in place when a network capacity adjusts their traffic.