Network scalability is the ability of your in-office network to handle sudden peaks and valleys in how much data it has to process. You might not think much about your network scalability when starting your business, but as you grow and hire more employees, your network will need more processing power to match the influx of traffic.
Guide To Improving Network Scalability
Fortunately, you can create a more scalable system for your company, whether you’re a tech expert or not. Network Elites, Irving’s top-rated IT consulting firm, is here to guide you through eight expert-recommended tips that are easy to follow and guaranteed to make your network more effective.
Develop a hierarchy
If your business has one central network where every employee from every department operates, you’ll quickly notice your network scalability fall by the wayside. However, your network’s performance will remain stable if you develop a network hierarchy.
Creating a network hierarchy means breaking that primary network into smaller chunks where each sector or group of employees gets its network. For example, rather than having your sales, marketing, and management teams working on the same network, they would each get their own space to operate. That way, you’ll only have a handful of people on a server at once instead of dozens of employees flooding one workspace.
Larger companies often take network hierarchies a step further and give multiple networks to one team, depending on its size and the diversity of its roles. For example, a company that sells computers and phones can have a network for the computer sales team, phone sales team, and a general use one for the entire team.
Coarse-grain the system
Not overwhelming your system is vital for network scalability, which is why hierarchies that remove people from one network lead to solid performance increases. However, you can make your network’s life easier without developing a hierarchy by coarse-graining your system rather than fine-graining it.
Coarse-grained and fine-grained systems hold the same amount of storage. However, fine-grained systems divide that storage between hundreds of smaller subparts, while coarse-grained systems keep it within fewer, larger pieces. Those large objects remove enough complexity from the system to run strong, even with dozens of people logging on simultaneously.
Invest in a virtual broadband network gateway
Network scalability becomes an issue for expanding businesses primarily because traditional broadband network gateways (BNGs) don’t have the flexibility to adapt to more traffic. Once the manufacturer ships them out, their capacity stays the same, and you’ll need to purchase more BGNs to keep up with your expanding company or suffer through poor scalability.
On the other hand, virtual BNGs emphasize flexibility and automatically adjust their capacity based on your company’s demands. Though virtual BNGs are more of a financial investment than the tips listed above, they are a concrete way to ensure robust network scalability no matter how much your business grows.
Lean on the cloud
Most of us use the cloud casually in our personal lives to store emails and documents. However, the cloud is also helpful in business settings as a powerful tool that dramatically boosts companies’ network scalability.
The cloud allows business owners to scale-out storage to an external source rather than holding it all in-house, freeing up more resources for your network and improving its scalability. Though some business owners worry about cloud storage’s safety, it’s a perfectly secure solution if you choose the right provider.
More cloud service providers are entering the game as the technology becomes more prevalent, so it’s essential to thoroughly research as many as possible to find the best fit. Working with the right provider will give you peace of mind that your data is safe on top of improved scalability.
Work with your system, not against it
You can limit access to your network’s programs and resources to one person at a time rather than having multiple people attempting to launch and use them simultaneously. While those limitations won’t make as significant an impact as changes to routing protocol or massive technology upgrades, sometimes, a simple change in how you use your technology is all you need.
Network hierarchies also keep tons of employees from flooding the same programs, but you might not need that extra investment if you’re a small company experiencing network scalability problems.
Port channeling
Port channeling is when you link multiple ethernet sources into one port, which increases your network’s bandwidth. This is an effective method for businesses with several employees, as the extra ethernet power can keep your network effective even with dozens of employees using it simultaneously.
In-memory caching for improving network scalability
Caches are hardware and software locations that store data, such as an external hard drive or your computer’s central processing unit. You can’t operate a business without holding data, but how you approach caching makes a big difference in your network scalability.
In-memory caching is the most efficient method and one of the best ways businesses can improve their scalability. In-memory caches link directly to your network’s applications and data, reducing delays from on-disk or relational caches.
Call Your Local IT Management Team
Business owners don’t always have time to manually monitor and improve their network scalability, but it’s vital to have smooth-running technology to keep a company functioning. However, IT teams make it so managers can focus solely on their business operations and leave the technical work to the experts.
If you’re looking to pass your network scalability woes to a management team that knows how to treat them perfectly, Network Elites is the team for you. Our team of hardware, software, and cloud management experts will equip your business with the technology and scalability strategies needed to make your slow technology a problem of the past.
We work with small and medium-sized companies because we’re passionate about helping local business owners expand their reach, and we’re ready to help your company next. Call our team today at (214) 247-6962 or learn more about how we can limit your vulnerability from frag attacks here.
