Thursday, May 21, 2020

Keep an Eye on Your Network 24/7 with Network Operations Center (NOC)

The internet is actually a network of networks that connects billions of digital devices worldwide. Standard protocols allow communication between these devices. Those protocols include hypertext transfer protocol (the ‘http’ in front of all website addresses). Internet protocol (or IP addresses) are the unique identifying numbers required of every device that accesses the internet. IP addresses are comparable to your mailing address, providing unique location information so that information can be delivered correctly.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Network Service Providers (NSPs) provide the infrastructure that allows the transmission of packets of data or information over the internet. Every bit of information sent over the internet doesn’t go to every device connected to the internet. It’s the combination of protocols and infrastructure that tells information exactly where to go. Twin Networks partners with a managed network operations center to keep an eye on your systems, any time of the day or night. Our NOC is staffed by more than 700 technicians who help with network management, monitoring, and support 24/7. They are trained to detect, resolve, and escalate problems with your networks, servers, databases, applications, workstations, and more as needed. Using advanced performance monitoring tools, we locate and fix issues before they lead to downtime. Plus, we’ll present you with a detailed monthly report, so you always know the status of your systems. The Networks and Operations department is responsible for a wide variety of enterprise technology services from network accounts, data storage, Internet access, and live-event streaming, to name a few.  The department employs 17 full-time staff and hires work-study students and student interns.

Network operation centers handle issues in a hierarchical manner so that if an issue is not resolved in a specific time frame, the next level is informed to speed up the problem-solving. Most of the network operation centers have multiple tiers, which define the skill of a network operation center technician. The issues that go through a NOC are escalated in a hierarchic manner. When an escalated issue is not resolved within the stipulated time, it is escalated once again to the next level to ensure a speedy resolution.
A NOC makes updating, troubleshooting, and installing software on systems connected to the network a breeze. Companies are continually upgrading their hardware, but without a NOC, they have to manually troubleshoot, install, and update all of their company's information onto each piece of hardware. However, with a NOC, they can set up appropriate settings to find issues within a network, update existing software, or install new software on old machines, or install all software on new equipment.

A company needs to have a way of keeping up with the health of their network, and a NOC is designed to make it easy to do just that. It can actually develop different types of reports to show a company how their network is performing, the health of the network, and the optimization of how their network is working.