Bandwidth Prioritisation: Key To Optimum Network Usage

Network infrastructure varies with different verticals. Network failure could lead to dire consequences for some while it could mean just another repair job for others. Having said that, there are some basics that every CIO should follow irrespective of the business vertical he/ she operates in. Scalability and flexibility of the network are two important fundamentals for an ideal network infrastructure. As companies expand operations, the need for scaling up the infrastructure is felt accordingly.

“From a scalability perspective, I would say that vendors should act like partners and not vendors,” said Ritesh Pothan, Head-Infrastructure and IS, eClerx. The vendors should suggest the right offerings from their kitty after evaluating the company’s overall operational footprint. They should suggest measurable business value that the company can attain from their offerings.

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Mehriar Patel, GM & Head, IT/ HR and Admin, Globus Stores, explains how they have taken care of the scalability aspect at Globus. “Financial applications from JDA work over a browser and the requirement for those applications is very minimum, it’s about 5 to 6 Kbps,” says Patel. “These applications, when moved over a Web-enabled front end are effectively giving us a better response. For our merchandising system also, which operates on AS400, we have applications, which require low-intensity bandwidth. Care has been taken to set up these types of applications that do not create an overhead on the network.”

Prioritisation of bandwidth is very important and that’s where the flexibility factors in. For example, if the enterprise network is running on a 124 Kbps line then the vendor should have the ability to provide 64 Kbps that is guarded for specific applications.

Making the Network Flexible with Bandwidth Prioritisation

“A threshold level is something that we continuously monitor, which tracks usage over a period of time and then according to the need of the hour, we always try and upgrade ourselves,” says Patel. “Also, there is a lot of bandwidth that is unutilised on our network. When I joined the organisation, we had a situation where we used to take a 2 MB line. Now that is cut to half i.e. 1 Mb. We provide a firewall set-up in our HO, which is tracked for what bandwidth is actually required,” says Patel.

Pothan from eClerx gives another example on how the Network can be made flexible. It can be as a response to changing business requirements. “You might get an order involving a hundred guys or say $100 mn. However, for that amount, the risk is concentrated with a handful of guys for the period until the conversion of that order,” says Pothan. It then becomes extremely important to ensure that those guys are fully functional and fully productive at all points in time. Thus, flexibility has to be applied at the people layer too.

Organisations can use many innovative ways to leverage their current network infrastructure and make it operate under conditions where the required hardware may be unavailable.

Using the Network Innovatively

The core area to look for is applications. “In my past, I have worked with very low bandwidths running Oracle over a public network of 9.6 Kbps link,” says Venkat Iyer, Director-Business Technology, Pfizer India. This was way back in 1998-99 when Iyer’s employer worked with Wipronet. They provided a telephone line connecting the company’s sales office to the Wipronet location. “For example, suppose we have a branch office in Bengaluru, it would connect to the Wipronet office in the Bengaluru hub. From there, they would carry the connection over their network and drop it into the head office, which was in Delhi,” says Iyer.

Iyer gives another example involving innovative network usage. The automotive company Iyer worked with at one point was approximately 30 kms away from the city. The only possibility of connection there was a Reliance CDMA phone. Therefore, the phone was connected to a PC and they ran SAP over it. “So with one phone and one PC, we ran a Rs 100 crore business there, in that particular location,” concludes Iyer.