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7 Reasons You Need a Distributed NOC

By Bee Moua, Director of Network Operations Center

For every business with IT infrastructure, having a Network Operations Center (NOC) is critical to ensure reliable and secure network operation. An important consideration for your NOC is its architecture, or structure. In a traditional centralized NOC, all network infrastructure monitoring, troubleshooting, and management tasks are performed from a single location. However, in a Distributed Network Operations Center (Distributed NOC), these functions are decentralized and distributed across multiple geographical locations or data centers.

While any NOC is better than none at all, leveraging distributed NOC architecture provides additional network benefits and improves efficiency, redundancy, and fault tolerance for IT infrastructure. Explore the seven major benefits of distributed NOC architecture provided by Tilson’s NOC service.

7 Benefits of Distributed NOC Architecture

Distributed NOC architecture ensures continuous and reliable service of your IT network beyond a traditional, centralized NOC. Here are the seven main reasons why you should be using a distributed NOC:

1. Geographic Redundancy: By strategically locating NOC nodes in different regions, the risk of a single point of failure is reduced. Even if one experiences issues, the others continue to monitor and manage the network. For Tilson, our NOC has personnel located in five states and two countries to provide full time coverage regardless of local network outages or natural disasters.
2. Scalability: As a network grows, it is easier to scale a distributed NOC by adding new nodes or locations as needed. This allows organizations to adapt to changing network demands.
3. Improved Security: By diversifying the locations of NOC nodes, security risks are distributed, making it harder for a single point of failure or security breach to compromise the entire network.
4. Enhanced Monitoring: Distributed NOC architecture often uses advanced monitoring and automation tools to provide real-time insights into network performance and health across multiple locations. Tilson’s NOC has multiple technicians constantly monitoring your mission-essential equipment to detect problematic trends and anomalies more rapidly to keep your network running smoothly.
5. Load Balancing: Workloads and responsibilities can be balanced among distributed NOC nodes, ensuring that no single node becomes overloaded with monitoring and management tasks.
6. Disaster Recovery: In the event of a natural disaster or other catastrophic event affecting one location, other distributed NOC nodes can take over network monitoring and management tasks to ensure business continuity.
7. Regional Expertise: Distributed NOCs tap into local expertise and knowledge about specific network segments or regions, leading to more effective troubleshooting and management. With a nationwide presence, Tilson provides the option for onsite technicians or onsite maintenance wherever you are.

Setting up and managing a distributed NOC requires resources and expertise, which is why many teams turn to Tilson to manage their NOC services. For example, a distributed NOC requires cloud-based servers such as AWS and Azure along with compatible APIs such as CDN, DNS, IPAM, and DCIM. Network monitoring tools must continuously oversee network devices and services while at the same time constantly analyzing and optimizing network infrastructure. Tools for team collaboration and communication are critical and NOC personnel require ongoing training to keep everyone up to date with the latest technologies and best practices. NOC personnel also need reliable remote access that provides security from outsiders. Finally, protocols and strategies must be developed to respond to incidents and issues to provide uninterrupted network operations. With everything that goes into a successful NOC, it makes sense to rely on those with the existing expertise and equipment so your team can focus instead on running your business.

Protect Your Network Operations with Tilson’s Distributed NOC

With decades of proven experience and state-of-the-art tools and processes, trust Tilson’s NOC team to safeguard and optimize your IT network. Email our team to learn how our distributed NOC will provide your organization with best-in-class network monitoring and management.