Some of us have heard about data bottlenecks at the office (or elsewhere) but thought to ourselves, “That’s an IT problem.” or “Office network is going to be slow; GREAT!” In this post we will discover what a data bottleneck is and why you should care.

Applies to both small business and home users

If you where to look back just a few years at what home computing and networking was you would see a simple setup. Most users would have just one computer, a desktop, a modem to connect to the Internet (ether DSL, cable or dial-up) and a printer. This setup was easy to put together and maintain because there really wasn’t that much information that needed to go from place to place in your office or at home. Most of the network usage was from the Internet and even that was light.

Now, compare that with today’s small business and home networks (wired or wireless), which are becoming more and more complex. Today’s average business or home user will have a high speed Internet modem, a router at least one desktop computer (or not), one, two or three wireless laptops, one or two printers, one or more networked gaming and some kind of media or file storage either directly attached to the network or running from a computer. While a lot of the total network traffic still comes from the Internet and web 2.0 technologies, a significant amount is coming from all of the network devices, computers, printers, etc. each talking to one another.

We must remember that networking was designed to enable two or more computers to share information and resources. To accomplish this, networks employ many standard and non-standard protocols that allow network devices to tell everyone who they are and what they have to offer.

Wikipedia defines protocol or communications protocol as a formal description of message formats and the rules for exchanging those messages.

For example: You got a phone call, in the U.S. with no caller ID. The standard protocol would be:

1. Pick up the phone.

2. Say “hello” in English.

3. Wait for a response from the caller.

4. The caller would respond with their name and the purpose of the phone call.

5. Now the phone call would go on and information can be passed on.

In any given day our average business or home user will start their computer and have 10 different protocols talking back and forth on the network before ever starting a program (more on this in a future post). Adding to the network load is any network or Internet enabled program and today’s average Internet experience, which is primarily, made up of intensely interactive, dynamic multimedia websites, which require increasing amounts of bandwidth. Now, we must also multiply this network usage by each device that is on and connected to the network. For our average user we will multiply it by seven; three laptops, one wireless printer, one media storage unit or server, one desktop, and one other, a game console, print server, smart phone, etc. And this isn’t even including usage like streaming media from either the media storage or the Internet to any one or all of the connected devices.

You can now begin to see the bottleneck. You can see why a single, consumer class router and “plug it into an empty port” network design is having problems support all of the its users needs and in the near future, as the demands on networks increase, this device and network design will no longer be able to adequately support its users.

Stay tuned for part 2: Fixing the problem: Route- on-a-Stick