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The Internet is slow today…

Ralf Mann, VP of Business Development and Consulting Services

We commonly hear this cry for help, and often the customer is one step away from ordering a faster Internet connection. However, by using good troubleshooting methodology, our engineers can frequently locate an unexpected cause and help you postpone that costly bandwidth upgrade a little longer. The process begins with these questions:

  • Is the connection saturated or “maxed out” in one or both directions?
  • Is there an unusually high number of Internet connections coming from one computer?
  • Is there outbound, or “upload”, traffic when it is not expected?

All three of these issues are commonly caused by malicious software, viruses, and peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Finding spam zombies and bandwidth hogs like bittorent clients on business computers is becoming a daily occurence for our staff. Pinpointing the infected computer is much easier with high quality network equipment. With good equipment we can usually locate infected computers in minutes. Without good equipment we often resort to asking you if any of your machines has been particularly slow lately, or we dispatch a network consultant to your office and perform a network traffic analysis.

Network traffic analysis is often called “sniffing the network”. No, we won’t use our noses…we don’t like technology that much! The term sniffing describes the first step: capturing data moving across your network. Next we use specialized software to analyze the traffic. The results show you what you network is being used for and can often be surprising. Does your business really need to upgrade it’s connection so employees can download music and movies faster? Sometimes there is a good business reason for the activity, but quite frequently there isn’t.

What can you do if you find out the saturation is due to non-business activity? You can opt to filter your Internet connection. BRI offers industry-leading filtering solutions from vendors like Websense and Secure Computing. You might not want to implement a filter, but simply to prioritize good traffic over bad. BRI can design and implement an intelligent network that recognizes and gives priority to traffic crucial to your business operation.

Poor performance without a saturation condition often has an easy fix, too. Improperly configured DNS settings, bad connections between network equipment, and error-laden telephone lines are common causes. Our network consultants are trained to quickly locate these issues and get your network performing at top speed!

The Internet is a critical business tool, but it comes with a cost. BRI can help you get the most out of your company’s Internet budget.