Why Buying More Bandwidth Might Not Solve Your Office Internet Issues

Many businesses mistakenly think that they can solve their office internet issues by adding more bandwidth. However, office environments are far more complex than residential ones, and purchasing a bigger internet connection may not always be the solution. In this blog post, we explain why buying additional bandwidth should be the last resort when trying to fix office internet performance issues.

What’s Wrong With Just Increasing My Bandwidth?

If you’re experiencing internet issues, simply increasing your bandwidth may not solve the root cause of the problem. While upgrading to a more expensive internet service plan may offer some gains, it’s important to recognize that various factors in an office environment can impact the end-user experience. If you don’t address underlying issues, such as hardware limitations or improper configuration, these problems will likely persist even after you increase your bandwidth.

So What Can I Do Instead?

To improve your office internet connection, you need to take a holistic approach by starting with your firewall. Firewalls play a crucial role in protecting your network from unauthorized access. Improper configuration or under-resourcing can turn them into a major bottleneck to throughput, causing slow download speeds and timed-out connections. Upgrading to a larger internet contract cannot solve these underlying issues. In an office environment, too many devices and concurrent streams can overwhelm or limit WAPs based on underlying hardware.

Next, you should evaluate your wireless access points (WAPs). In an office environment, WAPs can become overwhelmed with too many devices and concurrent streams or limited by underlying hardware. Improperly designed, placed, and configured WAPs can significantly affect a user’s internet speed performance.

In short, most office environments have not adequately equipped themselves for the number of users and the way they use network connections. Zoom calls, SaaS applications, and even background music streaming have become increasingly popular over the last several years. Today, networks that were not designed and configured with these considerations are likely to exhibit fragility.

Your Telecom Representative Is Probably Not Going to Help Your Internet Issues

When experiencing network issues, speaking with a telecom sales rep to purchase more bandwidth may not be the best first step. Typically, these reps are not equipped or incentivized to investigate your network architecture and identify the root cause of performance issues.

Getting a network evaluation by GCS can help you discover the root cause of your problems and address the source of your issues.

Conclusion

Having high-speed internet access is crucial in today’s business environments. Although buying more bandwidth when experiencing issues may seem like the solution, it is not always the case. There could be underlying issues causing slowdowns or drops in performance that need to be addressed first, such as network congestion, configuration, and hardware problems.

At GCS, we offer managed IT services to help small business owners troubleshoot and optimize their internet access for reliable and secure performance. By addressing fundamental issues, you may find that investing in additional bandwidth is unnecessary or requires only incremental improvement. Don’t waste money on unnecessary bandwidth upgrades, let GCS help you ensure reliable and secure high-speed internet access for your office.

Contact us today to learn more.