As a company grows and changes so must its network.The network needs to be constantly monitored, and adapted to accommodate changing business practices and traffic patterns. These adaptations can include increased bandwidth, which may only be called upon during busy traffic periods, alternate routes in the event of link failures, compression techniques to enable greater volumes of data to be transmitted using existing infrastructure, or changes in the type of traffic being transported.

Benefits

		Better use of existing investment
		Improved performance for applications and services
		More reliable service

Examples

One example of the application of this sort of service, is in the use of ISDN for providing dial backup and/or bandwidth on demand to complement existing private circuits. In the event of a link failure and/or a sustained increase in traffic on a private circuit, one or more ISDN channels can be brought up to share the load, or replace the failed circuit.

ISDN backup should be implemented alongside a network management strategy to ensure that it use is monitored and known, otherwise companies may never find out that their private circuit has failed, until the ISDN bill arrives !

Requirements

To look further than the current network design, and to look at the wider picture of how information flows around the company. Just because the network design was valid 3 years ago, does not necessarily mean that it is still right now. You will need to look at the network protocols in use, and whether they are all necessary, especially over WAN links, for example, almost all other protocols could be transported over IP, including X.25, IPX, bridge traffic, etc. By implementing different methods of backbone transport you can make real bandwidth and router overhead savings, as well as building a highly resilient backbone network by taking advantage of the many routing protocols available to IP which can provide load balancing, resilience etc.

Talk to GGR about your network enhancement needs to find the best solution for your company.