Ahhhhhhhh! Another frustrating day at work for you? Could it be because everything you wanted to do was slow as molasses? Each website you visited was slower than the last and your business depends on internet hosted applications, or “in the cloud” solutions? If that describes you, chances are good that you are suffering from a bandwidth bottleneck.
If you find everyone in the organization is slow, it narrows it down to one of a few things. An internet connection that was not designed for the amount of traffic you are moving through it, issues with your internet service provider, an extraordinarily high amount of traffic due to end of month activity within your own business, or it could be the result of something more sinister.
Determining if your connection speed is right for your business can take some research, however it is obvious that you should have more bandwidth available to you than you will typically use, not the other way around. Calls to your ISP may help you discover if the problem is upstream from you. Leaving two potential situations that may look similar initially. If you are closing out your month and everyone is busily publishing reports, then you may notice a spike in internet bandwidth usage on your business network, however, there could be other reasons that you might want to investigate.
Your users could be streaming audio/video, or utilizing the business network for unnecessary activities which could be robbing you of precious bandwidth, or, on the darker side, a machine could be infected with mal-ware that is consuming bandwidth in several unsavoury ways. To the untrained eye, spikes in network usages may appear the result of a user streaming, when in fact, their machine has been compromised and proprietary business collateral is being passed to the outside, or that machine may be relaying hundreds of thousands of unsolicited email / spam.
If you find your business network is experiencing an unexpected slow-down, it is best to seek the assistance of your IT professionals right away to avoid further exposure if that is the case. The old adage is, “better to be safe than sorry”, and it certainly applies here.
Homeland Secure IT will be glad to answer any questions you might have should you encounter a situation of this nature. Please call us. If you are already a client of ours and this is occurring after-hours, please do not hesitate to use your techs personal contact information. Your security is our first priority!