Don't Sacrifice Your Holiday Productivity to a Slow Network!

December 10, 2025

It’s not exactly a secret that the holiday season is—speaking generally—a pretty busy time for businesses. This makes any slowness in your network particularly frustrating to deal with, and potentially alienating to your audience. So what can be done?

For starters, the following five fixes:

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Business Network

Limit non-essential traffic. Not all network traffic is equally critical to your operations, so while your team members might want to get around to watching the first part of Stranger Things’ final season before part two drops on Christmas Day, you can’t afford your bandwidth being used up by such activities. Quality of Service (QoS) protocols can help ensure that official business is prioritized over off-topic use, helping keep your team on track.
Upgrade your network hardware. When did you last replace your routers and access points? If you’re still limited to Wi-Fi 6, you’re using technology approved in 2021. There are many benefits to modern hardware, speed being just one of them.
Clean your storage. While data retention is important, it is best practice to review your data periodically and remove or archive any files or applications you no longer need. This helps keep your network equipment running efficiently.
Review your cabling. Once you’ve audited your storage, take time to examine the cabling connecting the various components of your IT network. Damaged and outdated Ethernet cables can go unnoticed despite causing issues. It also helps to check whether the cables you are using have an appropriate category rating (shorted to CAT) for the task at hand. Some CAT ratings offer a large bandwidth but are effective only over short distances, or cannot bend to fit the available space.
Align your Internet speed with cloud use. You may rely on the cloud for a significant number of your business processes, from remote desktop use to Software-as-a-Service subscriptions. You need to know whether your available speed can support all this traffic. If it can’t, it is time for an upgrade.

We Can Assist You as You Make These Changes and Beyond!

It all starts with a comprehensive network audit from First Column IT. This analysis helps us diagnose issues in your network and develop the best approach to address them, delivering maximum value to your business.

Reach out to us at (571) 470-5594 to discuss a network audit and any other IT needs you have.

‍

What Are the Big Benefits that Outsourced Managed Services Give You?

Your IT team plays a crucially important part in your business machinations. However, many small and even medium-sized businesses may not have the in-house resources to effectively cover their needs. If this could easily describe your business, you might want to consider outsourcing some of your technology management needs to a managed service provider.

February 12, 2024

How to Approach Network Security Like a Pro

Network security is an incredibly nuanced topic with a lot of specifics that must be addressed. Still, today, we want to give you some actionable items that you can use to take an active role in improving network security for your business. Let’s dig into some of the essential dos and don’ts of network security for small businesses.

February 9, 2024

Avoid Sending Sensitive Information Over Email

A single oversight can potentially nullify the effectiveness of your cybersecurity measures. For instance, even if you've implemented security measures like multifactor authentication, a phishing scam or certain malware variants could grant unauthorized access to your email, compromising all the data stored in your inbox.

Welcome to the First Column IT Tech Blog