Steps to optimise your office bandwidth

Your company relies on a quick and dependable internet connection in order for you and your workforce to get on with business and suffer no hassles. Most company tasks require internet connectivity in order to be completed successfully, from sending emails and conducting conference calls to doing online research and working with online tools and programmes. A solid bandwidth is important in determining the strength of your internet connection, as the higher it is, the faster your connection speed is. If you’re struggling to maintain a high office bandwidth, then there are various ways in which you can optimise it.

Harness Quality of Service protocols

In the context of computer networking, Quality of Service, or QoS, refers to technology that manages data traffic in order to reduce network problems, such as the following:

• Latency, which is the delay in the transfer of data
• Jitter, which is network congestion that occurs when multiple internet connections are competing with each other simultaneously
• Packet loss, which occurs when a ‘packet’ of data fails to reach its destination when travelling across a computer network

QoS can help you prioritise specific types of data and identify which applications get the best service on your network. This in turn can prevent bandwidth bottlenecks, which occur when there is not enough bandwidth available, to ensure that all packets of data reach their respective destinations. There are various QoS technologies that can help with bandwidth, like these:

• Policing, which prevents applications from using up more bandwidth than is necessary
• Queues, which reserve bandwidth and prioritise traffic
• Shaping, which sets a limit on bandwidth transmission rate

Schedule bandwidth usage

It’s important for you to know exactly how your bandwidth is being used to apply QoS in a way that benefits your most important business activities. This is where bandwidth traffic monitoring solutions come in handy. These solutions can help you analyse and report on what your network is being used for and who it is being used by. With them you can review historical trends in bandwidth performance to identify when bottlenecks occurred, and then plan your bandwidth usage ahead in order to avoid problems like this in the future. You might like to limit certain operational activities to office downtime slots. One idea would be to run backups in the evenings, when other important tasks aren’t being carried out.

Limit access to non-business websites

Another way to ensure your bandwidth is properly conserved is limiting employee access to certain websites. We don’t mean banning your employees from using the internet for reasons such as catching up on the news, updating social media or making a doctor’s appointment. Just make sure they aren’t spending too much time, if any, on sites that use up a lot of bandwidth. Two examples would be YouTube and Spotify. People might like to watch the occasional video in between tasks or listen to music while working, but, for the sake of your bandwidth, it’s best to make sure your employees aren’t getting too involved in these activities.

Solid bandwidth is crucial to ensuring your company is running at full speed in terms of internet connectivity. If you want to maximise your office’s bandwidth, then take advantage of reliable tools and technologies such as QoS protocols and bandwidth monitoring solutions. Also limit your staff’s use of sites and applications that might use up more bandwidth than you’d like. Take these steps, and you’ll hopefully experience less connectivity issues in the workspace.