Analyzing Network Issue

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• Determine possible reasons as to why the network has slowed down:
• [x] Overview of how the messages are traveling through the network layers
• [x] How is the network transmitting the information to begin with

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Facts:

• The company is experiencing a slow network connection suddenly after a year of normal connectivity.
• Network issue appears to happen enterprise wide, and not on a particular system, the issue might be happening at one of the lower network layers, particularly the physical layer.

Possible Issues:

• Overloaded Network: There may be a situation where the network may simply be overloaded with data and the current system may not be able to determine which network may be overloaded by incoming traffic (Matthias Becker and Helena Szczerbicka). The way in which data enters a network is highly dependent on the type of media used. If the enterprise is using an unreliable source of media, such as modems or even Wi-Fi networks, to transmit data, there may be issues with latency or signal interference. The physical layer transmits data via electrical pulses, therefore, if the transmitted signal is weak, or if there is interference, the information may be delayed or incomplete – causing errors (Tanenbaum, n.d.).

Possible Solutions:

• Changing the type of media, the company is using to make a network connection may be a solution to the slow network connections.

Conclusion: More information is needed to determine what the exact network problem is. It could be a network issue on the enterprise side, but it could also be a problem on the internet service provider’s end. Overall, understanding the network models, how the layers connect to one another and what is done at each layer helps narrow down the source of the problem.

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References

• Becker, M & Szczerbicka, H. (1998). “Modeling and optimization of ON/OFF sources transmitting data over an unreliable network," SMC'98 Conference Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.98CH36218), San Diego, CA, USA, 1998, pp. 529-534 vol.1, doi: 10.1109/ICSMC.1998.725466.
• FitzGerald, J., Dennis, A., & Durcikova, A. (2017). Business data communications and networking (13th ed.). Retrieved from https://vitalsource.com
• Tanenbaum, Wetherall computer networks 5e (n.d.). Retrieved from http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/streaming/esm/tanenbaum5e_videonotes/tanenbaum_vi deoNotes.html