If your organization operates in a remote work environment, it can be challenging for employees to stay connected while working from different locations.
Often, these challenges are caused by bandwidth issues that your employees may experience that can negatively impact their ability to effectively communicate internally.
If you are not aware of, or don’t understand, the problems with bandwidth usage while working remotely or specifically, from home, you may not know how to resolve these issues.
Understanding these problems will help you solve these problems if your organization experiences them in the future.
Coeo knows how important a reliable network is to an organization and has helped improve the networks of thousands of customers.
We want you to understand the problems with bandwidth usage while working from home so you can improve your network reliability and performance to meet any remote communication challenges.
By the end of this article, you will understand the challenges with bandwidth in a remote work environment and how to resolve them.
The problems with bandwidth usage in a remote work environment
While working remotely may be a beneficial business model for your organization and your employees, there may be communication and network challenges created by this structure.
With your employees working remotely, it can be difficult to maintain a connection to the network and enable reliable, internal communication. The challenges with bandwidth usage in a remote work environment include:
Network congestion
One of the main bandwidth problems your organization may experience by having employees working from home is network congestion.
And in today’s business environment, working from home has become extremely common, putting more pressure on your network.
Because of this, residential internet networks can become congested during peak work hours when more people work from home. This leads to slower load page times and call breakups and drops.
In addition, since employees are using their home network, they may be using too much bandwidth if their family, for example, is also using the internet.
Multiple family members using the same home network for online activities or work can strain your bandwidth.
Video conferencing and other collaboration tools
Video conferencing over Zoom and broader collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack are typically used by employees working remotely to communicate with each other.
Technology enabling video conferencing and other collaboration tools use significantly more bandwidth to ensure smooth communication.
As a result, consuming too much bandwidth on tools like these can lead to call breakups and drops as well as video freezes and drops on video conferencing calls.
Large file transfers
Uploading and downloading large files can use a significant amount of bandwidth causing latency issues.
If your organization requires large file transfers such as videos or graphic design content, it will be important to ensure that proper bandwidth is available to meet these business needs.
Poor-performing or outdated hardware
If your employees are working from home and attempting to connect to the internet via their home network, they can experience high latency if they are using poor-performing hardware.
Having reliable hardware is just as important as having reliable software.
If your employees are trying to connect using out-of-date routers, for example, they will experience connectivity issues even when they are using reliable connections such as broadband.
Geographic location
One of the biggest problems that affect bandwidth usage in remote work is the geographic location of employees. Employees working in rural or remote areas will often have a difficult time connecting to the internet.
High-speed broadband connections are often limited in many of these areas which often result in slower and less reliable internet connections.
How to resolve bandwidth issues while working remotely
If your organization is hindered by bandwidth issues when employees work remotely, it can affect communication resulting decrease in productivity.
However, there are some solutions to resolving these issues including:
Install an SD-WAN/SASE solution
If your organization is affected by bandwidth usage, an SD-WAN solution can improve your network and solve these issues.
SD-WAN is an overlay network that is built on top of underlying network connections and can be delivered over fiber, LTE, or broadband.
SD-WAN is applied as a software network of SD-WAN appliances, connected by encrypted tunnels ensuring both a reliable and secure network connection.
In addition, SASE, which offers many of the same features as SD-WAN, has more of a focus on security and remote work.
SASE is a cybersecurity network that combines a WAN and a security system into one cloud-based system.
However, instead of being installed in the network, SASE identifies users and devices moving within the cloud network and applies policy-based security resulting in secure and reliable access to data.
Upgrade hardware
As mentioned previously, it is important for hardware to perform just as well as software.
Because of this, ensuring your hardware is up to date is critical when working remotely to avoid any issues with bandwidth usage.
Increase your bandwidth
Another way to resolve or avoid these issues is to increase bandwidth. When working with a network provider, you select and pay for a certain amount of bandwidth per month.
However, if you are using too much of that bandwidth each month, you may experience high latency and other issues mentioned above.
To combat these issues, it may be worthwhile to upgrade to more bandwidth so your work isn’t affected by an inability to communicate in a timely and effective manner
Avoiding remote work bandwidth problems in the future
Now you understand the challenges with bandwidth usage and how to resolve them. This will enable you to avoid these challenges and improve your network reliability and speed.
A poor-performing network will adversely affect employees’ ability to communicate effectively; especially when working from home when the most common way to communicate is over the internet.
This can result in reduced productivity and efficiency and can lead to lost customers and revenue.
Understanding these challenges and how to resolve them will help improve your network and communication in a remote work environment.
Coeo knows how important a reliable network and effective communication is to an organization with remote employees and has delivered thousands of solutions to customers to improve their network.
We want you to be aware of the problems with bandwidth usage in a remote work environment so you can avoid them in the future.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about bandwidth issues and your network’s performance or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand the problems of bandwidth usage in a remote work environment, read this article below to learn more about how SASE can help with remote work:
