Routing & Switching Remediation
Network Cleanups
Increase Network Uptime with Expert Cleanup and Optimization Services
Is your network configuration aged and not maintained? Or has it grown organically for a long time and is in desperate need of a cleanup? Crossconnect is here to help you. Networks often grow organically over time to keep up with business needs, going a long time without intentional design. This can leave networks open to operational and security risks. In this situation, it is often a good idea to have an unbiased expert discover your network and provide guidance and a vision to make sure your network continues to meet your needs in the future. This reduces the chances of lost revenue and time that comes with outages and security incidents.
Routing Cleanup
Ensuring Reliable and Secure Network Routing
Routing is what makes modern networks function. Packets need to be routed from your internal hosts to other internal hosts, your internal servers, SaaS providers on the internet and more. In general, routing isn’t top of mind until it breaks. That said, when there is a major outage due to misrouting, misconfiguration, or a malicious attacker, the fact that routing is not something that is always going to “just work” becomes a poor assumption.
There are many things we can do to make sure our routing is more resilient, less prone to error, and hardened against malicious attackers.
Transitioning from Static to Dynamic Routing for Scalability and Resilience
Small networks typically start out using static routes. These are routes that are individually configured in each layer 3 router by an administrator. In a small network, this often makes sense, as routing protocols (e.g. OSPF / EIGRP / BGP) have an inherit complexity and knowledge burden. Over time networks grow and the positives of static routing start giving way to their downsides. The manual nature of their configuration adds an administrative burden. Also, their lack of dynamic communication means that failover and redundancy is hard if not impossible to implement with them.
If you have a growing network using aging static routes it is recommended to start using dynamic routing protocols to reduce the administrative overhead and introduce resiliency and redundancy into your network. Crossconnect’s experts can design and implement routing protocols for your network, regardless of how complicated your existing setup has become.
Enhancing Routing Security to Protect Modern Networks
Maybe your organization has routing protocols implemented but hasn’t had security features implemented into them? This is the case with many networks today that implemented routing protocols several years ago. In the early days of the internet, security at all levels was an after-thought at best. And though security has been implemented in many layers of IT since, it has often still been thought of as an afterthought in IP routing. That said, as attacks become more frequent on networks, due to easier methods to monetize them, it is important to consider security at all layers of IT infrastructure, including networking.
Routing protocol security and authentication are now very important on modern networks. BGP authentication, IP filtering, and other network security controls can help reduce the impact of outages, data exfiltration, and other security incidents on your network. Crossconnect can assist you in securing your network today.
Switching Cleanup
Optimizing and Securing Growing Switch Networks
As ethernet switch fabrics grow over time they become more susceptible to broadcast storms, multicast storms, and configurations errors that can cause outages and lost revenue. Unfortunately, as a business grows the answer often is “buy another switch” without consideration of network design. This is understandable because networks must grow at the pace of business. After all, business needs drive technical needs, not the other way around.
Just like routed networks, switched networks have the same tendency to grow organically without design. It is occasionally time to pause and design from time to time to ensure we are not going down the wrong path and that our switched networks stay reliable, redundant, and secured.
If odd issues crop up and then go away with no explanation this is a sign that is time to have an expert discover and address the design of the switching architecture. If you have had a broadcast or multicast storm this is another clear sign it is time.
Network Devices Upgrades
Keeping Network Devices Updated for Optimal Security and Performance
Network devices often go years without software upgrades without an issue. This is a testament to the stability of the hardware and software that run on these devices, but it is far from optimal for both resiliency and security. Though your network device upgrade schedule is always going to be specific to your organization’s risk profile, security policy, and operational needs, in general Crossconnect suggests a baseline of upgrading all routers and switches at least semi-annually. Further, Crossconnect suggests having a policy for emergency upgrades for security vulnerabilities reported by the vendor with a special emphasis on High and Critical CVEs.
Ensure Network Stability and Security
It would be inconceivable to go five years without running updates and patches on servers. Why should network devices be any different? For both operational and security reasons it is essential that you network devices be updated regularly. If your organization needs someone to provide guidance on developing a network device upgrade and patching policy or to execute network device upgrades, Crossconnect is ready to assist you!
Proactive Maintenance
Enhanced Security
Expert Guidance