IT ecosystem relies on proactive, day-to-day activities and strategic foresight
What is network maintenance?
Sometimes your network requires some extra assistance to avoid problems. While there are certain preventative maintenance tasks you can perform on your own to minimize network downtime, you might find that you need to pair your efforts with those of the experts to keep your operations running smoothly on a daily basis.
Well-maintained networks encounter fewer problems and are much easier to troubleshoot than those left without upkeep. At its core, network maintenance constitutes all the tasks and systems in place to monitor, update and run your organization’s computer network before problems strike.
“Network” involves your entire portfolio of physical IT assets, like the hardware and servers, and non-physical IT assets, like the software and cloud access — also known as your IT ecosystem.
Similar to other functions of a business, a healthy IT ecosystem heavily relies on proactive, day-to-day activities and strategic foresight rather than reactive adjustments or ad-hoc, spur- of-the-moment patches. The basic tenets of maintaining a network — and the basis of a successful network maintenance plan — typically include the following:
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Network cybersecurity: Implementing robust and up-to-date network defence layers, such as traffic-managing firewalls, virtual private networks, user access controls, double authentication measures, log inspections for usage documentation, real-time breach notifications and auto-generated security reports.
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Network performance: Analyzing top network performance concerns influencing the speed and reliability of your devices, including bandwidth usage, traffic patterns, bottlenecks, frequently down or crashed servers, connection lags, delays and more.
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Network scalability: Ensuring proper software and hardware systems fitting your current operations, number of network users, endpoint locations and businesses functions.
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Regular hardware and software updates: Scheduling updates across network components and interfaces, which in turn bolsters both a network’s overall performance and security defences.
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IT infrastructure compliance: Maintaining internal compliance with company practices as well as external government regulations and industry policies.
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Pre-emptive network repairs: Using auto-generated reports and analytics to spot and patch usage problems across the IT ecosystem — or at the very least troubleshooting them — before they turn existential.
Examples of network maintenance tasks
Troubleshooting
Network Issues
Planning For Growth
Installing and Configuring Products
Ensuring Compliance
Monitoring and Improving Network Performance
Establishing Reliable
Network Security
