Now that Corporate America has been working from home a good few weeks, workforce performance and bandwidth are hot topics at hand. While some companies are having no issues at all, others are still struggling with connectivity and productivity. Here are a just a few questions we’ve seen and some answers from our experts.

• How much bandwidth does a company need?
• Each company/industry is different thus each has different bandwidth requirements, so it’s impossible to say in general how much any particular company needs. Luckily there are guidelines that help I.T. pros determine your company’s minimum requirements. If you have I.T. network expertise on staff, they should be able to help you make a determination. If not, hire qualified professionals to come in and take a look. Knowing what bandwidth you have now – and what options you have for ramping up quickly – can go a long way to alleviating stress and setting you up for success.
• What type of increase should be made when some or all of our staff are now remote – especially when we’re conducting video meetings throughout the day?
• For remote workforces, two areas need to be reviewed to ensure maximum productivity: bandwidth and network infrastructure. When it comes to bandwidth, processor-intensive applications and video conferencing are huge drains on network speed. In general, companies need to budget at least 4Mbps per employee, per video call. But everything has changed with our recent work-from-home reality. For example, our AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) clients have jumped from 70-80 Mbps to over 380Mbps per day on average, which can be a tremendous strain on connectivity (productivity!) if your infrastructure can’t handle this increase in usage. As such, the network itself needs to be scalable so that remote workers do not experience connectivity and performance issues when connecting back into company resources. This requires larger planning initiative as companies need to have the proper network hardware in place to support and manage the dynamic bandwidth shifts that will occur with a remote workforce.
• How can I tell if my bandwidth is an issue? What type of things might I experience?
• The first and most reliable way to tell if you have bandwidth issues is to have network monitoring in place. Reporting/metrics can easily show resources usage across the network. Bandwidth adjustments can then be made based on that knowledge. Network monitoring can be done in-house or via a managed service. We provide this service to our clients so that we can pull usage reports on demand or on schedule, which keeps their networks optimized and their workforce productive, quickly and seamlessly. Also, there are numerous bandwidth issues that are caused by resource issues (CPU, RAM, Disk, Network, etc.) that can only be identified through metrics and reporting.
• The second way to tell if there is a bandwidth issue is through user experience and feedback. Here are some common symptoms you and your employees may experience: slow connectivity when trying to access file shares; inability to make or maintain a video conference; choppy voice quality on a conference call or private call; and long download times or page load times on servers. All of these issues can make a work-from-home solution pure torture for everyone involved while gravely impacting productivity.
• If you are having bandwidth issues that are impacting your ability to get things done, don’t stress out. Give us a call at 972-423-5110. We can help.
• Is there a rule of thumb for firewalls in terms of age of life or size for use or type of use, etc.?
• In our last blog, we explained that the network firewall(s) is among the first hardware to look at in the network’s infrastructure to determine if the network can fully utilize the bandwidth coming in. Here are a few things to keep in mind: Most network hardware should run without issues for an average of 5-7 years before needing to be refreshed. There are a lot of determining factors that might shorten equipment lifespan such as heat, moisture, or dirty power.
• We do not recommend running firewalls beyond 3-4 years due to the dynamic nature of security threats and how the threat horizon changes daily. Older hardware can leave security vulnerabilities unpatched or unrepairable which will compromise the entire network infrastructure.
• Sizing of firewall hardware can be tricky since some manufacturers advertise maximum throughput performance under ideal conditions without additional services enabled. For example, there might be a firewall rated at 1Gbps of throughput under simple packet inspection but once you enable deep packet inspection, IDS/IPS, malware scanning, and email scanning, all of which need to be enabled for better network security purposes, the actual performance of the device is closer to 50Mbps. If you have 300Mbps of bandwidth coming in, your network will only be able to utilize 50Mbps of that 300Mbps, making your additional bandwidth useless. This seems to be a common mistake companies make as network hardware needs to be fit for purpose. It might take multiple firewalls or appliances to handle the demands some companies will put on their infrastructure when a remote workforce is in place.

You have enough worries. Keeping operations running with a remote workforce shouldn’t be one of them. For over 20 years, i2i has helped companies of all sizes smooth out operations with smart IT solutions so that employees can be as productive as possible – regardless of where they’re located.

We hope this short Q&A gives insight as to what to consider when making decisions regarding your bandwidth and your network’s ability to function optimally – whether you are working remote or not. Some of these considerations can be both daunting and overwhelming, so we are here to support you should you need some help. Call us today for a free phone consultation at 972-423-5110.