If your business requires more bandwidth than you are prepared for or you work for a business that uses a lot of bandwidth, there are some things you can do to make the most of the bandwidth you have.

There is also technology and hardware available to help you manage high bandwidth use.

What Does Your Business Need?

When you’re trying to figure out how much bandwidth your business needs, it can be more complicated than counting the number of users. You need to consider what they do and what programs they use to do their jobs.

A 20-person advertising agency may require more bandwidth than a 100-person accounting agency as they upload and download large photo and video files.

There are free calculators available online to help you determine how much bandwidth should be used by your users. But these may need to be adjusted depending on the types of work done and the bandwidth used to do it.

Common bandwidth hogs are VOIP and video conferencing and online sharing and backup programs, such as Dropbox.

Different tasks use different levels of data, for example:

  • Opening a webpage = 1 MB
  • Streaming a video = 5 MB/minute
  • Skype video = 28 MB/second

Maximizing Your Network Bandwidth

There are a few things you can do to maximize network bandwidth, some of these, such as Quality of Service and traffic shaping, we’ve covered in our post on Prioritizing Network Traffic.

Arguably one of the easiest things you can do to avoid overloading your network is to schedule any network updates or backups to non-peak hours. Knowing when your network uses the most bandwidth and scheduling updates to avoid those times or rate-limiting your updates can limit user impact.

Load balancing and streamlining traffic flows can help manage the flow of traffic and keep it moving in the as efficiently as possible. Mesh wireless technology can be leveraged to reduce network bottlenecks.

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Mesh Wireless Networking 101

Using out-of-bandwidth transport for network hardware and software management can save your available bandwidth for the mission critical applications and services that need it.

WAN optimization tools have replaced the use of network routers and switches to manage and optimize WAN links. Optimization tools use caching and other techniques to reduce traffic on WAN connections and are easier to manage and more adaptive.

Technology and Tools

To measure and monitor your bandwidth usage, there are several tools available. CompariTech put together a list of the Six Best Bandwidth Optimization Tools for 2018.

Network Optimization Tools use traffic shaping, eliminate redundant data, data caching and compression and streamline data protocols. They can help improve performance, make critical processes faster and identify issues. The information they provide can help you improve software and hardware performance.

1. SolarWinds Tools
2. SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset
3. Paessler PRTG
4. ManageEngine Tools
5. ManageEngine OpManager Plus
6. Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold

Some of the tools listed offer free trials or free download so you can explore them risk free and determine if they’re right for your business.

Up-and-Coming Solutions

SD-WAN – Provides extra capacity by making bandwidth from multiple connections. If one connection fails, traffic is routed to a link with capacity available. The software used to manage SD-WAN can address issues and prevent user impact.

Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) – Provides 1Gb-per-second bandwidth for networks. It provides speed with the simplicity of Ethernet and a lower cost than other comparable technologies. For servers and datacenter, the move is from 10GbE to the cost efficient 25GbE. 25GbE provides next-generation Ethernet speed that balances cost and performance.

Fibre Channel – Is a high-speed data transfer technology to connect servers, storage devices and users. It offers fast transfer speeds, flexible topology, and flexible upper-layer protocols while removing the bottlenecks of traditional server connection technology.

High-Density Switches – Network switches have become smaller. Previously, a 48-port switch needed two chips with advanced port configurations. Now that can be achieved on a single chip. This keeps costs down and improves power efficiency.

Bundling/Unbundling Channels – For datacenters looking to upgrade their links speeds or to have more flexibility to move data across their network, links can be bundled or unbundled into channels. Bundling together four 25Gbps links can get you 100Gbps, conversely, a 100Gbps link can be unbundled into four 25Gpbs channels.

Big Data Analytics – Knowing when to make adjustments to allocate network bandwidth is priceless when you’re dealing with high bandwidth needs. Analytics and monitoring software made for large amounts of data and bandwidth provide valuable information for network managers and datacenter operators alike.

There are several tricks and tools that can help you make the most of the network bandwidth you have. And, it looks like there are a few things coming that can provide a much-needed bandwidth increase, if that’s what your enterprise needs.

The need for bandwidth and the data that comes with it isn’t going away any time soon. Hopefully now you’re feeling a little more prepared to manage the bandwidth you have and plan for the future.