Ten strategies of maintaining enterprise network bandwidth

As enterprises migrate more and more services to the cloud environment, how to better control the network bandwidth utilization of the enterprise becomes an increasingly important problem. Here are 10 points to maintain enterprise network bandwidth skills, I hope to give you some reference.





1: Block Web site streaming media into the corporate network





if companies allow employees to surf the internet for work-related surfing, the first thing to do is to block streaming data from websites such as Netflix, YouTube, and Metacafe. While the occasional video from YouTube does not have any impact on the corporate network, given that video streaming media consumes more bandwidth than regular Web services, the increase in the number of employees watching video can have a significant impact on the corporate network.





2: Control Cloud Backup Program





If you are using a cloud backup service, make sure that the application service has a current-limiting mechanism. If the current limiting mechanism is not adopted, cloud backup applications will consume as much enterprise bandwidth as possible. If you're just backing up small files, such as Microsoft Office documents, you don't have to worry too much about the bandwidth that your backup application is consuming. However, if it is the initial cloud environment backup enterprise data, you should consider the bandwidth consumption problem. I have seen some enterprises one months before the completion of the initial data backup, if there is no reasonable bandwidth control, such a large number of data backup will be full of enterprise network bandwidth, can not allow enterprises to work properly.





3: Control VoIP use





VoIP is another bandwidth-sensitive protocol. If an enterprise plans to adopt VoIP, it should develop a strategy that allows employees to use VoIP for work-related calls. Of course, I admit that employees are sure to have some kind of non business call every day, but since mobile phones are already commonplace, restricting the way employees use their office phones should not be difficult.





4: Using proxy caching





Proxy caching can help organizations reduce the amount of network traffic that employees create when they visit a common web site. Simply put, when employees visit a Web site, the content of the site will be temporarily stored by the proxy server, when the next time employees visit the site, part of the site can be directly transferred from the proxy server to employees, without the need to occupy the enterprise export bandwidth. The use of proxy caching not only saves bandwidth, but also allows employees to feel the network speed of the enterprise is quite fast, improve the efficiency of employees.





5: Centralized program upgrades





today, almost all applications support the ability to check updates online and automatically download updated files. If you centralize this functionality, you will be able to effectively reduce their impact on network bandwidth. For example, instead of allowing all PCs in the office to connect autonomously to the Microsoft update Service to check for updates, set up a WSUS server to download all the necessary update files and distribute them to every PC in the office. In this way, employees ' PCs will not visit the Internet once.





6: Use hosted Filtering





If the enterprise has its own mail server, then a good way to save bandwidth is to use the Hosted filtering function. With hosted filtering, the enterprise's MX record points to the cloud server rather than to the enterprise's mail server. The server receives all messages that were originally sent to the corporate mailbox and filters out spam and messages that contain malicious code. The rest of the mail is forwarded to the enterprise, saving a lot of bandwidth that would otherwise be used to receive mail data, while also reducing the burden of spam filtering on the mail server.





7: Identify large bandwidth





in any company, there are some employees who use the Internet far more than other employees. As a network administrator, you should identify these employees and see why they generate a much higher level of network bandwidth than normal. I've seen employees of a company using Peer-to-peer shareware on office computers, so even if a network administrator locks up his computer screen, or when employees go out, his computer still takes up a lot of bandwidth.





8: Proactively scans malware





Malware can turn a computer in an enterprise into a zombie that sends spam or malware, which takes up a lot of enterprise bandwidth. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the security of the desktop system and the network actively to keep the network bandwidth.





9: Use QoS to preserve bandwidth





QoS is the service quality, which first appeared in the Windows2000 system, which belongs to a kind of bandwidth retention mechanism, and has been used so far. If a program in an enterprise has a specific bandwidth requirement (such as a video conferencing application), you can retain enough bandwidth for the program through QoS. Bandwidth retention does not take effect until the specified program is enabled, so if the specified program is closed, the reserved bandwidth will automatically be allocated to other network applications that are running and will not permanently retain network bandwidth.





10: Ensure that the bandwidth purchased is sufficient





There are a number of factors that affect the enterprise's network access bandwidth, so do not expect access to all sites will be the maximum connection speed. However, the enterprise's network access performance should not be too far away from the access bandwidth purchased.





Although I haven't seen any ISP intentionally giving the enterprise less bandwidth than the access bandwidth it buys, the ISP has a lot to share a bandwidth with multiple users. In this mode of shared connections, the network activity of a user directly affects the access bandwidth of other users who share the connection. If you feel that the enterprise's access speed is too far away from the theoretical speed, then you should contact your ISP to see if it belongs to a shared connection. Although unshared access bandwidth is more expensive, it should be worth the money for the business.