Martello BLOG

Best Practices To Improve Your IoT Network Performance

Your IoT capabilities are only as powerful as your network. Without a solid network foundation, you won’t produce an Internet connection that has the capacity to handle cutting edge smart technology, including the Internet of Things (IoT). This includes real-time applications such as voice and video streaming, online gaming and file sharing.

IoT network performance begins to dwindle when you have real-time traffic applications competing for the same bandwidth. Whether you are live streaming voice or video, using file sharing services or participating in online gaming, these applications require constant internet bandwidth to maintain their services. This issue becomes more critical when you are looking at IoT applications such as autonomous vehicles and emergency dispatch systems. If there is a delay, no matter how small, it could risk public safety. By taking steps to ensure the network can handle several real-time applications at the same time, you can ensure that your business is ready for the next phase of IoT.

The best ways to improve IoT network performance include:

1.Leverage bandwidth aggregation using link balancers

Link management and balancing is a mature technology component that any organization relying on the Internet needs to take a critical look at adopting, especially in the new age of IoT. With faster bandwidth available at lower costs, it has become very easy with the help of Layer-2 link balancers to bring a new level of performance, resilience, uptime and reliability.

Why is this so effective?

By setting your network up with dynamic routing and seamless path selection between multiple links from different ISPs and technologies, you can make the most out of the bandwidth you’re working with.

2. Aggregate that traffic to a Cloud using compatible technologies

By using a cloud instance to interface with on-premise equipment, an organization can build up their business continuity strategy. These virtual link balancers aggregate and optimize links from multiple providers and technologies, dynamically and without requiring any changes to either firewall or configuration, or IP address migration, which provides a faster, more reliable access to applications and services hosted in the Cloud.

Why is this so effective?

These virtual solutions are flexible, so they can be made to fit within an organization’s network without having to reconfigure existing hard and software. Deploying a solution like Martello’s Cloud Connector gives you the option to set it as a VPN Hub, Private Cloud Gateway or a Business Continuity Site for hosted web services.

  3. Separate the traffic onto different networks to prevent competition between the two

Essential traffic can be sent through its own dedicated instance. By logically dividing your network appliance into multiple instances (eg. Martello’s Virtual Forwarder Interfaces, or VFIs), organizations can forward traffic through two or more separate interfaces without any crossing over at any point. By dividing up this traffic onto different networks you don’t have to worry about degradation caused by applications competing for bandwidth, as each instance uses its own circuits.

Why is this so effective?

When IoT applications aren’t competing for bandwidth they’re able to run smoothly and without delay. This is important for critical applications such as autonomous vehicles and emergency response systems.

4. Inspect and prioritize traffic according to business priorities

With the overwhelming growth of demands, organizations face an uphill battle at providing bandwidth to satisfy the needs to the business. With the growing demands of IoT it’s important to be able to set traffic priorities to ensure business critical applications are running smoothly. Take control of your existing bandwidth and fully saturate its effectiveness by using traffic shaping and segmentation.

Why is this so effective?

Using solutions that can help you prioritize traffic will help bring order to the bandwidth chaos and ensure that essential services are receiving the network power that they require.

One thing to consider about IoT objects; they do not connect directly to the Internet. All of their sessions go through your LAN, or WiFi, and all that traffic goes out to the Internet through the same place. It’s very important to make sure that the network equipment handling that traffic can sustain the throughput and the increasing number of sessions generated by these devices.