What is Network Optimization?
Why Network Optimization Is Critical to User Experience and Business Performance
What is Network Optimization? It comprises a set of technologies and methods that aim to improve the overall health of a network. It considers every single IT infrastructure component—from the endpoints to the server to cloud-based applications as well as their processes and connections. It also involves best practices for accomplishing network orchestration and improved performance, such as global load balancing and bandwidth management.
The first step in network optimization is a network assessment, which will establish a baseline and uncover such things as latency issues on the network. But it doesn’t stop there. You will want to continuously monitor hardware health to know how to optimize your network performance.
Today's Enterprises Run on Moving Data
The interconnected and real-time nature of today’s business world makes network optimization critical because organizations depend on reliable, secure, available, 24/7 movement of data. Every year brings more and more demands on the networks that carry this data, and an almost-overnight shift to remote work has made network performance more essential than ever.
Network optimization is key to an excellent end-user experience, employee productivity, and overall business efficiency. For example, when there is latency in the network, users can become frustrated with slow responses from cloud-based applications. Latency can also impact collaboration by reducing the quality of videoconferencing experiences, which have become must-have collaboration tools, especially during the pandemic.
The Benefits of Network Optimization
Network optimization provides several benefits:
- Makes data flow quickly by enabling optimal use of network system resources.
- Analytics and predictive modeling enable network managers to get a forward look at the impact of any changes to the network architecture.
- Helps network managers proactively manage the networks by providing relevant performance metrics.
Make Network Assessments a Routine
Ongoing network assessments also help you keep track of specific performance metrics like bandwidth usage, availability, packet loss, latency, and jitter. In other words, it gives you essential information so that you can tune what is necessary. By continuously monitoring, managing, and optimizing performance metrics, you can ensure the highest service levels for users throughout the network.
What are the Common Optimization Metrics?
The top network optimization metrics quantity specific aspects of the network. They identify certain attributes that reflect the network’s health, such as latency and packet loss, jitter, congestion, and bandwidth—all of which are crucial to network performance, end-user experience, and end-user productivity.
Key network optimization metrics include:
Availability
>In a perfect world, your network would have nine nines of availability, which translates to just milliseconds per year of downtime. So, your network should include the availability of such things as network devices, interfaces, WANs, SD-WANs, services, processes, applications, and websites.
Utilization
>At any given moment, is your network busy, stable, or idle–or degrees in between? This metric is calculated as a ratio of current network traffic to the peak traffic the network can handle. It can help network managers make better-informed decisions about needed upgrades and maintenance.
Latency
>Network speed is typically measured in milliseconds. When there are delays in data movement, or “latency,” you will witness negative impacts on user experience, depending on the application. For example, an application like email easily conceals latency with buffering, while a video conference or VoIP call will suffer from latency.
Jitter
>This occurs when some data packets arrive out of order. It is usually a sign of an overloaded router due to network congestion. Like latency, it typically impacts applications like real-time communications, where users will notice the reduction in voice or video quality.
In a perfect world, your network would have nine nines of availability, which translates to just milliseconds per year of downtime. So, your network should include the availability of such things as network devices, interfaces, WANs, SD-WANs, services, processes, applications, and websites.
At any given moment, is your network busy, stable, or idle–or degrees in between? This metric is calculated as a ratio of current network traffic to the peak traffic the network can handle. It can help network managers make better-informed decisions about needed upgrades and maintenance.
Network speed is typically measured in milliseconds. When there are delays in data movement, or “latency,” you will witness negative impacts on user experience, depending on the application. For example, an application like email easily conceals latency with buffering, while a video conference or VoIP call will suffer from latency.
This occurs when some data packets arrive out of order. It is usually a sign of an overloaded router due to network congestion. Like latency, it typically impacts applications like real-time communications, where users will notice the reduction in voice or video quality.
Ultimately, the remedy to these network issues may include modernization of your network and IT infrastructure around more efficient models such as SD-WAN and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). Open Systems has built upon its early lead in SD-WAN to create the industry’s most flexible SASE solution. Our SASE+ managed solution secures users no matter where they work while delivering direct, fast, and reliable connections to the internet and cloud.
Contact Open Systems today for more information on how Open Systems SD-WAN and SASE+ solutions can help solve your network optimization challenges. A team member can also explain how our experts can help you achieve the best and network assessment. Contact us to learn more.
