It started with one Personal Computer (PC); networks happened since then and we have all been happily computing ever after. If this were to be an ending in an IT-related fairly tale, it will do. However, for a company, IT expert, networking consultants, business owners, small/medium or large organizations, there’s never a “happily-computing-ever-after” scenario. As your network grows, associated problems also grow with it. Here are some common problems you should know about:
Scalability (What if I want to grow big but don’t spend too much time/effort/money growing big?)
Most networks that organizations use –be it big or small – share limited bandwidth and can support limited computing needs. As businesses grow, the network ought to grow astride. However, most businesses do realize that their incumbent network isn’t scalable – that is, it wasn’t designed to grow as fast as the business does with as effort as possible. Even if it does, sacrifice in terms of man-hours, costs, efficiency or business interruption is common place. That’s where the importance of planning and designing a network from ground up with long-term business goals flares up like a candle in the cold, damp winds of uncertainty.
Speed of network (latency)
Data travels in packets. The amount of time it takes for this packet of data to get from one point of the network to the other is called latency. In a hub-based network, for instance, each node within the network has a built-in delay to avoid network overloads or collisions (discussed below). You did hear about the delays or slowing down of networks when large files are transferred or when resource-heavy applications are used, haven’t you? Networks have an inherent deficiency of slowing down to a crawl when used excessively. What do you do about it?
When networks fail (yes, failure happens everywhere)
In a network already function or one that you plan to implement, deploy or design, yet another Achilles heel is the possibility of network failure – partial or complete. Typical problems arise due to hardware incompatibility, incorrect speed settings like stretching over 100 Mbps data speeds over a smallish 10 Mbps capable network hub, incompatible routers, switches and excessive broadcasting, streaming, or data usage.
Data collisions (where there’s traffic, collisions are inevitable)
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) is the usual protocol Ethernet uses to communicate within and across a network. In layman’s terms, it means that a node trying to send out data will not send this data until the network is free and capable of transfer. In case that happens, data packets get lost in the digital jungle. To avoid that, nodes either don’t send out data until the network highways are clear. In case it does happen, the nodes wait and re-transmit causing overloads, slowing down of networks, etc. The more nodes there are and equally more amount of data to be sent or received (the bigger the networks are), the more possibilities that data collisions will occur.
Each of these problems is fodder for network specialists to work on. We are aware of these since we have to roll-up our sleeves and work on hundreds of these problems each month. If in doubt, do ask us.
This isn’t an exhaustive list. What other problems do you think can occur with networks? We’d love to hear from you. Please do feel free to comment.
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