Question

List the five top considerations to reduce network congestion and improve network performance.

Answer 1

Ans:

Like congestion on roads causes the vehicles to take much more time in reaching their destination, Network Congestion leads to higher latency time causing the data to reach its destination at a slow speed.

Five considerations to reduce Network Congestion to improve network performance are as follows:

(1) Network Traffic Analysis:

It is important to analyze the Network Traffic in order to find out the underlying troubles in the network so that they can be resolved. We can make use of network monitoring tools to conduct an analysis of the network traffic flow. We can use these network monitoring tools to find the segments which generate higher volume of traffic and then troubleshoot the problem to reolve it.

(2) Eliminating Network Bottlenecks:

A bottleneck in a network is a segment which is unable to handle the amount of traffic coming from its connecting segments and because of this it causes intolerable amounts of congestion on the network. So we need to eliminate these bottlenecks by increasing the segment's bandwidth capacity so that it matches with the neighbouring segments maximum traffic flow.

(3) Optimising TCP/IP Protocol Settings:

To improve the connection between the nodes in the network the TCP/IP protocol settings needs to be optimised. The TCP tuning techniques are used to adjust the network congestion avoidance parameters of TCP connections over high-bandwidth, high latency networks. Proper tuning of the networks can increase the performance manyfolds.

(4) Prioritizing the Network Traffic:

To reuce congestion in the networks we can follow the approach of prioritising the specific network needs over others in compilance to our needs. Use of routers or switches can help us identify and give higher priority to specific types of traffic. Qos (Quality of Service) can be enabled for small businesses.

(5) Analyzing the Traffic Patterns:

The traffic patterns must be analyzed to find the segment of network, where the congestion occurs, as well as the reason why it happens in order to minimize the congestion and correspondingly latency. Once the problem has been identified an effective solution to avoid congestion and improve the entire infrastructure can be found out.