I’ve been asked a couple of times, if we had the money, what would be the five things I’d do to improve the performance of our network.

Each time, the asker is left almost speechless at my instant response. I don’t know why they think I need to consider these as they are always at the back of my mind. So, today I share my list with you – you’ll note I’ve added in a sixth which I personally don’t often think about because of the size of the network I’m usually dealing with.

1. A faster link to the internet.
   You can never have enough. Well at least that’s what I’ve found so far. There’s always a time when someone doesn’t understand why they are being throttled or why the “internet is slow again”. SO eliminate one headache and buy, buy, buy.
2. Get a hardware firewall.
   Get rid of all those individual software firewalls. Gives each PC a performance boost and allows for central management of security policies.
3. Get a network sniffer.
   At a minimum you need a laptop running wireshark but you can spend £1000′s on a decent tool – but if your network is of any considerable size you’ll reap the rewards .. and probably the first time you need to use it in anger.
4. Install network monitoring software.
   Despite a network engineers claims about how stable their kit is, they do have problems. And as every bit of network kit I’ve ever come across uses snmp protocol, then why not install one of the many monitor and report tools out there?
5. Upgrade your AP’s to the fastest available.
   Apart from your physical internet connection I’m going to presume you have a 100Mb switched network with gigabit trunks in place? If so, then your wi-fi AP’s will be the other bottleneck you have.
6. Go resilient.
   Need I add to this?

I am fully aware that for some of these you don’t need to even spend money or at most you can re-use older hardware to do the job.

What are you top network upgrades then?

Give me your number one, money no object, LAN / WAN upgarde you’d go for?