While some organizations are actively seeking ways to optimize the performance of the company LAN, others follow the mantra “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. The latter is often a good rule-of-thumb to follow, but in the case of the corporate LAN there may be some fairly basic changes that can be made that will significantly improve network performance. These optimizations are not new or unique, but should be implemented in even small LAN environments.

Monitor the LAN

While monitoring the LAN is not necessarily an optimization in and of itself, proactive network monitoring will go a long way to highlighting areas where LAN performance can be improved. A good Network Management System (NMS) will identify areas where performance is sub-optimal, and even make recommendations on how to improve performance in many cases. It is certainly not simply monitoring the up/down status of a given LAN node or attached device.