The Causes and Effects of Network Outages

Just about every type of business these days relies on the internet to some degree. With this in mind, it’s important that part of your IT efforts be devoted to preventing outages and downtime. After all, if your systems go down, it can severely damage your company’s productivity and potentially result in you being unable to complete sales or conduct crucial business processes. This means lost money and lost opportunities, not to mention potential lost loyalty or damage to your brand due to customers being frustrated by your lack of responsiveness or other effects of your outage.

You cannot be successful in preventing outages if you don’t know the most common reasons why these outages occur. Here’s a quick overview of some of the primary causes of network downtime and what you can do to prevent them from occurring by minimizing your network outage risk in MT:

• Old, outdated equipment: The older your equipment gets, the more likely it is to experience issues that lead to outages. Any obsolete equipment you have in your system that is no longer receiving ongoing support is a potential threat to the functionality of your network. Therefore, it’s important to prioritize upgrades for outdated equipment so you can eliminate at least one vulnerability in your system.
• Misconfiguration: Improper installation of network devices is far and away the most common cause of outages—in fact, some experts estimate nearly 80 percent of unplanned outages are caused by misconfiguration. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to work with network professionals when getting things set up, rather than trying to accomplish the task yourself. Setting up a commercial network is significantly more complicated than setting up a home network. Even if you think you’re savvy, it’s a task better left to people with professional experience.
• Hardware failure: Any piece of equipment you have can fail at just about any time. You can drastically reduce the chances of unexpected hardware failure by staying up to date with all required patches and maintenance. You can also build redundancy into your system to prevent a single failing piece of equipment from causing your entire network to collapse.
• Power failures: If you have a power outage at your facility, your network will also go out unless you have backup power prepared to keep you online. Here again, redundancy can be a big help in making sure an outage in a single circuit doesn’t shut down your entire network service.
• Human error: Occasionally, people make mistakes that can result in shutting down a network. This might be something as simple as pulling the wrong plug or failing to follow the proper procedures when working with network equipment. You can avoid these types of mistakes by ensuring only professionals handle network equipment, or even just by making sure all devices and cords are properly labeled.

For more information about the various causes and effects of network outages and to assess your network outage risk in MT, contact the experts at Tech Service Company today.

Categorised in: Office Networking