When approximately 85 million people were sent home to work, most of us didn’t know how long it would last or what life would look like “after” the COVID-19 pandemic. Time has passed, and there is still no clear vision of what in-office life will look like in the coming months or years. It’s clear that there’s no going back to the old model.
In fact, nearly 43% of full-time American employees say they want to continue working remotely more often even after the economy has reopened, according to a national survey by getAbstract. Even as early as April 2020, 22% of CFOs surveyed by Gartner had already cut their real estate expenses or were planning to do so, and 32% had cut or were planning to cut on-premise technology spending.
All of this leads to the likelihood that more people will be working from home in some form or another for the foreseeable future, and that organizations can’t just wait it out until things get back to “normal.” Rather, they need to address and plan for this new reality.
From an IT and networking perspective, this means you will likely be asked to support your staff’s connectivity and application access in environments you did not set up, where you have little or no visibility or control.
Over the last few months, we’ve discussed home networking, residential internet connections, and other aspects of working from home that IT teams should consider. Here are four key things to know about home networks:
1. Home internet and business internet are different
Home and business internet and the networks they run on are set up differently, so how they perform is also different. This has become more apparent with so many people working from home and using these systems that weren’t built for that. Learn more about how home internet and business internet are different.
2. You can diagnose home network issues
Internet outages are a problem; however, there are more things that can happen on an internet connection that can cause degraded performance in your VoIP calls, video conferences, and other internet-based business tools that are just as frustrating as outages. Learn how to diagnose your teams’ home office internet problems and solve them.
3. More bandwidth may not solve your home internet problem
Internet providers sell speed packages and so many of us are accustomed to thinking that’s what makes or breaks a great connection. However, internet connections have issues regardless of the size or speed of the connection. Read more on why simply getting a faster speed package may not help your home network perform they way you expect.
4. Use QoS to improve the WFH experience
Quality of service (QoS) can be used to prioritize important business applications over other streaming services typically running at home (like Netflix, Xbox Live)—keeping your remote workers productive and focused. Check if QoS will help with home internet issues your remote workers are experiencing, then learn more about Bigleaf Dynamic QoS.
Create your own high-performance cloud network in your home offices with Bigleaf
Learn more about how Bigleaf Home Office will help your teams working from home stay focused and productive with reliable and performant internet and home networks.
