Last time, we blogged about whether or not social media and personal Internet use was a bottleneck for employee productivity. Let's not look at the Internet as a fundamental time-waster or a necessary evil. After all, the Internet has changed the way companies do business. This time we're going to investigate if your Internet is keeping up with your company.

What type of connection is your business using? Are you connecting via DSL, FiOS, Cable, or do you have a T1 line? These days, T1 connections are becoming more affordable and readily available for small and midsized businesses. Certainly, for some organizations this might be overkill, but often the bottleneck comes from a metric that isn't instantly noticeable with your connection.

Fast Download, Slow Upload

Most ISPs will flaunt their speedy download speeds. If your Internet provider is offering you 8Mbps download (a pretty decent speed for a dozen employees or so), but what they don't tell you is that your upload speed might be 1Mbps or less. Sure, downloading files is fast, but what about sending emails and large files, or letting your employees remote into the office network when on the road or at home? On-premise hosted applications will work great in-house on the network but offsite will be sluggish. Consider that your company firewall could be consuming up to 20% of that speed depending on how old it is, and you've got yourself a lot of wait time.

If your company is using a backup solution that archives data off site (a practice EVERY company should do!), then you can forget about having any bandwidth left to do anything if your upload speeds are so low.

What can be done about this?

First, upgrading your Firewall is a great solution, especially if it is more than a few years old. Technology is getting better all the time, and new firewalls are more efficient, and can even do more to protect your network.

Second, contact your ISP and see if you can renegotiate a faster connection, especially for your upload. You never know, you might be able to get more for less, as ISPs are very competitive. If your ISP just can't get you any more speed for a reasonable cost, look into other solutions. As mentioned, it is a highly competitive market with new technologies and services and packages coming out all the time.

Want some help speeding up your Internet connection and overall network performance to eliminate productivity bottlenecks? Give PACE Technical Services a call at 905.763.7896.