How to Prevent 7 Common Causes of Network Failures
Downtime caused by network problems has a major impact on your business. Tackle these leading causes of network problems to minimize business and financial impact.
1. Misconfiguration
Misconfiguration is the cause of as many as 80% of unplanned outages. Reduce the change of making mistakes by using automation to deploy changes rather than relying on setting parameters manually. Test all configurations in a lab environment before making changes on your production devices.
2. Security breaches
Security failures and allowing unauthorized traffic can bring down a network due to excess load. Make sure you have appropriate security controls in place to keep intruders from overloading your network.
3. Old equipment
Every obsolete, unsupported device is a potential threat to your network’s functioning. Be proactive in planning upgrades and replacing out-of-date equipment.
4. Human error
Perhaps the leading cause of outages are unintentional mistakes. Along with configuration errors, people make mistakes that can be as simple as pulling the wrong plug or not knowing the proper procedure. Avoid these errors through proper staff training and proper documentation, including labels on all devices.
5. Incompatible changes
These aren’t misconfigurations or configuration changes made in error; these problems arise when a change you intend doesn’t work properly alongside your other equipment. Avoid these problems through testing changes and new devices in a lab setting before placing them in production. You’ll also reduce these issues if you have good records of your current devices and settings to help you identify incompatibilities in advance.
6. Hardware failures
Any device can fail; make sure you perform maintenance and apply patches as needed to keep devices up to date and reduce the risk. You can also reduce the impact of any device failure by building in redundancy to prevent a single point of failure from disrupting the whole network.
7. Power failures
Have backup power supplies to prevent a power outage from shutting you down. Connect redundant devices to different power circuits to ensure a single circuit outage doesn’t shut down a service entirely.
You can avoid many of these errors by keeping good records and reducing the amount of manual work your team performs with automation. Monitoring and performing preventative maintenance go a long way to minimizing the risk of equipment failures that bring down your network.
Prescient Solutions network services include designing, implementing, and monitoring your network to provide maximum reliability. Our team of experts is certified in leading network and security technology and has been helping Chicago-area businesses meet their technology goals for more than 15 years. Keeping your IT operations running is as important to us as it is to you. Contact us to learn how our IT knowledge can solve your network challenges.
Additional Network Resources
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