Since Verizon and AT&T are gearing up to support a new 5G infrastructure, planning ahead will be necessary to maintain a stable and managed network environment. Verizon has been doing benchmarks of the new 5G network, which has been hitting speeds of “minimum” 300Mb/s download and Max rates of 9Gigabytes download. (which is about 92x faster than a standard 100mb/s line).
With this new technology and download speed, people will need to focus on the “weakest link” in their network. It used to be the download speed from an internet provider, but now it can be the cabling, wireless access points, or router. Make sure all new routers have the highest throughput (the amount of material passing through a system) possible to allow for the traffic to be filtered and managed efficiently.
With such high bandwidth now, you don’t need to do much traffic shaping and Quality of Service (QoS) on your network. That’s because 5G is the equivalent of suddenly adding 18 lanes to a once 2-lane highway.
5G will help move a lot of in-house resources to the cloud. With the high availability of bandwidth, a lot of cloud technologies can be used, including “virtual computers.” A user can log into an “endpoint” or very simple computer, then stream up to the cloud’s very high-end PC which can be remotely backed up and managed. This will work for gaming in the future, too.
File storage will now be more effective. Instead of storing to a local file-share server, files can now be downloaded and uploaded directly to the internet. With all these changes, network administrators should plan for a 5G future.
Anthony has been in the MSP business since before the acronym existed. Managed IT once started as break-fix solutions and some light phone support.
Since then, he has seen the industry flourish into a landscape of platforms, cloud servers, software tools and AI . Tailoring network configurations and software stacks to the specific needs of each business.
In his current role, he focuses on proactive planning, ensuring clients can avoid potential issues altogether. This involves meticulous planning for enhanced business continuity, allowing swift resolution of any unforeseen challenges. What initially began as addressing "fires" through break-fix solutions has evolved into a proactive approach, ensuring that such issues are prevented from arising in the first place.
