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5 Tips to Streamline Capacity Planning and Optimize Bandwidth Usage in the Enterprise

Belinda Yung-Rubke

Today’s network managers are tasked with two conflicting business directives when it comes to network performance. The first is to ensure the delivery of an optimal end-user experience on the network, and the second is to reduce the operational costs of the network. To help meet these challenges, Fluke Networks is providing five tips to streamline capacity planning and optimize bandwidth usage in the enterprise.

With the network under more and more stress as video, VoIP, virtualization, VDI, wireless and more, all fight for bandwidth, understanding the right time and reasons to increase throughput is key.

Here are five areas to consider when tackling this challenge:

1. Understand Bandwidth Resources and Performance Tradeoffs

Bad performance does not necessarily mean that bandwidth is not sufficient. Knowing how busy links are, and for how long, is key to gauging the correlation between bandwidth and performance. Under-utilized links can drain bandwidth resources by using up valuable budget that could be allocated to other over-utilized links. Keep in mind that network bursting is normal, it just needs to be within proper thresholds.

2. Use the Right Tools for the Job

Trying to detect over-utilization of bandwidth can be difficult when the tools are not well suited to the job. Viewing a long-term trend of usage flattens out peaks of high utilization, thus hiding true problems. Peak utilization views show when links are the busiest, but do not indicate for how long. Traffic totals per-day, per-month, etc., can show general growth, but ignore the differences between different times of day. The key questions to answer are: has the link been over-utilized, for how long, and by what application and what end-user?

3. Account for Business Hours

While a network link might be busy during the night or weekend while backup and software updates are performed, it may be acceptable during the business day when staff is working. Do not let evening and night data cloud your view of utilization. Having a combination of real-time and back-in-time views allows IT to see what is happening more quickly, solve problems faster, and move on to more strategic initiatives efficiently.

4. Is Bandwidth Being Used for Business?

There are two types of traffic, business and recreational. Obviously, business has priority, so it is important to know why a busy link is busy. Is it usage of a business application? Is it the breaking news story everyone is streaming to the desktop? Even if it is a business application causing congestion, does that application really need to consume that much bandwidth? Or, is the bandwidth being used by old rogue applications that IT needs to remove from the network? (Efficient application design and WAN optimization are also examples of strategic decisions that should be considered alongside the tactical approach of bandwidth needs.)

5. Streamline the Job

With networks growing quickly, the job of understanding what links are busy, when and why, gets more complex and time consuming. The amount of time taken to perform proactive capacity planning is the main reason why the job does not get done. Do not waste time looking at links that do not require attention. Focus on those critical few links that are busiest for the most amount of time. Use customized alerting that can show when bandwidth hits 80 percent for a rolling three minutes, and be prepared to react.

Belinda Yung-Rubke is Director of Field Marketing for Fluke Networks.

Related Links:

www.flukenetworks.com

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5 Tips to Streamline Capacity Planning and Optimize Bandwidth Usage in the Enterprise

Belinda Yung-Rubke

Today’s network managers are tasked with two conflicting business directives when it comes to network performance. The first is to ensure the delivery of an optimal end-user experience on the network, and the second is to reduce the operational costs of the network. To help meet these challenges, Fluke Networks is providing five tips to streamline capacity planning and optimize bandwidth usage in the enterprise.

With the network under more and more stress as video, VoIP, virtualization, VDI, wireless and more, all fight for bandwidth, understanding the right time and reasons to increase throughput is key.

Here are five areas to consider when tackling this challenge:

1. Understand Bandwidth Resources and Performance Tradeoffs

Bad performance does not necessarily mean that bandwidth is not sufficient. Knowing how busy links are, and for how long, is key to gauging the correlation between bandwidth and performance. Under-utilized links can drain bandwidth resources by using up valuable budget that could be allocated to other over-utilized links. Keep in mind that network bursting is normal, it just needs to be within proper thresholds.

2. Use the Right Tools for the Job

Trying to detect over-utilization of bandwidth can be difficult when the tools are not well suited to the job. Viewing a long-term trend of usage flattens out peaks of high utilization, thus hiding true problems. Peak utilization views show when links are the busiest, but do not indicate for how long. Traffic totals per-day, per-month, etc., can show general growth, but ignore the differences between different times of day. The key questions to answer are: has the link been over-utilized, for how long, and by what application and what end-user?

3. Account for Business Hours

While a network link might be busy during the night or weekend while backup and software updates are performed, it may be acceptable during the business day when staff is working. Do not let evening and night data cloud your view of utilization. Having a combination of real-time and back-in-time views allows IT to see what is happening more quickly, solve problems faster, and move on to more strategic initiatives efficiently.

4. Is Bandwidth Being Used for Business?

There are two types of traffic, business and recreational. Obviously, business has priority, so it is important to know why a busy link is busy. Is it usage of a business application? Is it the breaking news story everyone is streaming to the desktop? Even if it is a business application causing congestion, does that application really need to consume that much bandwidth? Or, is the bandwidth being used by old rogue applications that IT needs to remove from the network? (Efficient application design and WAN optimization are also examples of strategic decisions that should be considered alongside the tactical approach of bandwidth needs.)

5. Streamline the Job

With networks growing quickly, the job of understanding what links are busy, when and why, gets more complex and time consuming. The amount of time taken to perform proactive capacity planning is the main reason why the job does not get done. Do not waste time looking at links that do not require attention. Focus on those critical few links that are busiest for the most amount of time. Use customized alerting that can show when bandwidth hits 80 percent for a rolling three minutes, and be prepared to react.

Belinda Yung-Rubke is Director of Field Marketing for Fluke Networks.

Related Links:

www.flukenetworks.com

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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