Networks Don't Age Gracefully
Most small business networks were designed for a different era. The switch and firewall that handled 10 employees sharing a file server five years ago weren't built for today's reality: cloud applications, video conferencing, VoIP phone systems, and remote workers connecting through VPN tunnels. When a network falls behind, it doesn't fail all at once. It degrades gradually, and people adapt to the slowness without realizing how much productivity they're losing.
1. Everything Feels Slow
If opening files on your server takes noticeably longer than it used to, or cloud applications like Microsoft 365 feel sluggish despite a fast internet connection, the bottleneck is likely inside your network. Gigabit switches that are eight or ten years old may technically still work, but their throughput under real-world conditions with modern traffic patterns tells a different story.
We see this constantly in offices that upgraded their internet connection to 500 Mbps or higher but still run traffic through consumer-grade switches and a firewall that maxes out at 200 Mbps of inspected throughput. You're paying for bandwidth you can't actually use.
2. Your WiFi Has Dead Zones
If employees cluster in certain areas to get a signal, or if conference room video calls drop regularly, your wireless infrastructure needs attention. The fix usually isn't a better router. It's a proper wireless survey followed by enterprise-grade access points placed based on actual coverage analysis, not guesswork.
Modern WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E access points handle high-density environments far better than anything from even three years ago. For offices with 20+ wireless devices, the difference is dramatic.
3. You've Had More Than Two Unplanned Outages This Year
Occasional network hiccups happen. But if your office has experienced multiple unplanned outages where employees couldn't work, that's a reliability problem that won't fix itself. Common culprits include failing switches, overloaded firewalls, DNS configuration issues, and ISP equipment that's past its service life.
Each hour of downtime costs the average 20-person office between $5,000 and $10,000 in lost productivity, depending on the industry. Two outages a year that each last half a day are already more expensive than the network upgrade that would prevent them.
4. Your Firewall Is More Than Five Years Old
Firewalls aren't set-it-and-forget-it appliances. A five-year-old firewall likely can't inspect encrypted traffic at line speed, doesn't support current threat intelligence feeds, and may have reached end-of-support from the manufacturer. That means no more firmware updates, no more security patches, and a growing list of known vulnerabilities.
Modern next-generation firewalls from vendors like SonicWall and Fortinet provide intrusion prevention, application control, content filtering, and VPN capabilities in a single appliance. The performance difference between a 2020-era firewall and a current model is substantial.
5. You Can't See What's Happening on Your Network
If you can't answer basic questions like "how many devices are connected right now?" or "which application is consuming the most bandwidth?" then you don't have adequate network visibility. Without monitoring, problems only surface when users complain, which means you're always reacting instead of preventing.
A properly designed network includes monitoring, alerting, and logging that lets you spot issues before they cause downtime and identify trends before they become problems. This isn't optional anymore; it's a basic requirement for any business that depends on its network to operate.