NETWORK OUTAGES AT A COMPANY; THE ENTREPRENEUR'S NIGHTMARE

To keep this electronic organism in operation, the corporate WAN (Wide Area Network) or computer network that extends within a business organization, considered its backbone, must be kept in operation, otherwise the economic losses can be truly substantial.

Unfortunately, failures in this type of networks are more common than is desired, with a proportional increase as the complexity of the systems increases, the equipment ages or wears out due to its use, or by having fewer resources for its correct maintenance.

The dreaded term "Downtime" is repeated too frequently and is the cause of true nightmares for the teams responsible for the ICT of companies and, of course, a cause of anger and discontent on the part of the business owner. Inactivity that is usually derived mostly from network interruptions that cause computer systems to crash. Approximately, 89% of companies record an average of one unplanned annual outage.

Causes of network outages

Logically, if we know the main causes of network outages, we will have located the problem and will be able to act directly on them. The first of these causes is usually human error, and many highly complex systems still require manual processes, and in them, configuration errors are made, above all. As this complexity increases, it should be understood that the possibilities of making errors will increase.

To avoid errors in this sense, monitoring software, a performance monitor or NPM (Network Performance Monitor) that controls the activities of employees during working hours, which Check the pages that are downloaded and which of them are useful for the company, which serves to ensure that a specific worker is misusing their computer equipment.

Other reasons why a network failure may occur is electrical failure, whether derived from storms, or from the facilities themselves, whether due to fans, capacitors, the control circuits themselves, among others. Lack of security, if software and firmware patches are not properly installed, is more than likely to lead to network outages. On the other hand, and in this same sense, DDoS denial of service attacks continue to increase, which overloads the conduits and manages to disconnect entire organizations within the Internet and we also highlight the aging of hardware, considered the main problem in networks. Finally, there are the so-called weak links, which is nothing other than the fixed infrastructure that is exposed to physical damage, such as blows, falls or weather effects, which will lead to outages and congestion.

How to reduce network outages

In addition to using the monitoring software that we indicated in the previous point, we must keep in mind a series of elements and valid actions to ensure that our connection keeps the vital systems of our organization always active.

Ahead any of the preventions that we are going to relate below, ICT professionals in organizations and large companies need to have access to the most advanced and effective software, to supplier companies such as SolarWinds, which has with products capable of satisfying these demands and keeping the backbone of companies running.

The programs needed will be related to those capable of offering an updated service to mitigate possible attacks on networks, a backup service for failures, which provides a 3, 4 or the most recent 5 G wireless connection for those cases where the failures are located in fixed infrastructures, a program that maintains constant supervision of the network capable of detecting the first alarm symptoms or signs of a possible failure so that action can be taken as soon as possible on the problem. Likewise, an effective capacity is needed to quickly review any changes that have been made to the network itself and, finally, we insist on the need for us to be able to facilitate network management and be able to reduce manual errors with monitoring software such as the one referenced at the beginning of this article.