Don’t Forget Your Network Infrastructure When You Move Your Business Location!

Moving office locations is not the most common occurrence for most businesses, but when it does happen, there are be many factors that can give you headaches. Moving your network infrastructure might be the most sophisticated and complicated task for the majority of businesses. To some companies, their network cabling and IT infrastructure might be their most valuable asset. Unlike boxes of paper documents and staplers, IT infrastructure equipment is costly, delicate, and sensitive to movement. If you are not moving them properly, you may damage internal components without knowing it until you plug them in again.

In this article, we will walk you through what you can move when you are moving your office and how to move different types of network infrastructure components properly. We will give you all the practical pro tips for moving IT equipment and improving your network while constructing your new office. This is the article you cannot afford to miss.

Cable Removal

Many businesses do not pay enough attention to network cabling from a technology standpoint and an IT management standpoint. Like blood vessels carry blood to different human body organs, cables transmit all data to every part of your IT network. Any mismanagement of cables could easily lead to so many serious issues. When it comes to moving cables, it gets even more complicated because they are either exposed, built behind walls, or under the floor. As such, businesses often their abandon cables to avoid the hassle or demolition. Surprisingly, there are some cases, where you cannot leave your existing cabling due to law and safety concerns.

In Canada, we have the Canadian Electrical Code or CE Code. It has a dedicated section on network cabling and how they can pose a major fire hazard. At the end of the day, network cabling are copper wires. They can spread fire quickly like a fuse to every major section of a building. By no means does this make cable removal mandatory! The main danger is abandoning cabling behind walls without accounting for it. That would be a violation of the Canadian Electrical Code and any stricter community regulations. Who ever takes over the premise must know exactly where each cable leads so there are no surprises down the line.

Leasing Considerations

Before moving or planning to leave your equipment, it will be a good idea to review your lease agreement first. Most leasing agreements can include terms about cable removal when ending the contract. Based on that, if it is the tenant's responsibility to remove all cables, you will have to hire a professional company and remove all installed cabling and hardware. Even if it is not the tenant's responsibility to remove IT equipment, it is worth considering bringing your networking hardware to your new location.

It would be best if you start planning to move your cables at least one month ahead. First, you need to review the latest Canadian Electrical Code and see if there are any community regulations. Also, check your lease agreement to see if there is any language covering cable removal. If not, it is good to check with your landlord about it if you do not own the premise. This is a responsible thing to do, and it also helps you to keep your tenant record clean.

Re-Use or Upgrade Your Cables?

From a durability standpoint, the cable wrapping will age much faster than the copper wires inside. It will also depend on your environment. For instance, outdoor cabling should be maintained or replaced to withstand the elements are your new location. You can never go wrong with replacing your old wires with a stronger cable upgrade for the long run. On the other hand, if your network cabling was installed indoors in a dry, untouched area, they can easily be reused in your new office.

If your business demands a much higher connection speed, upgrading your network cabling at the new office is a perfect opportunity. The most popular cable types are category 5 and category 6, commonly known as CAT5e cables and CAT6 cables. CAT5e cables are fast enough for most businesses, whilst CAT6 cables are for larger companies that require much higher transfer and connection speeds. If you expect to support more staff and devices at your new office, getting newer and faster CAT 6 cables makes more sense.

For the time being, there is not as much network cabling innovation in comparison to switches and routers. If your cables provide adequate connection speed to your applications, keeping the same cables is a viable idea. However, before you do that, be sure to inspect each individual network cable to ensure there is no performance degradation from aging or moving. 

It is also possible that your cables are too long or too short for your new location. At least if they are too long, you can trim your cabling or loop them. However, if they are not long enough, you will have to the wire. Overall, buying newer cables that fit exactly right is better than relying on Ethernet cable extenders to make use of shorter cabling.

Time To Upgrade to Fibre Cables?

If you want the best-performing cables with better durability and better coverage, you definitely want to consider upgrading your cables to a fibre cabling network. It might be overkill for many businesses, but it is the latest and fast network infrastructure on the market and you will be ahead of the competition. Likewise, many building don’t have fibre infrastructure in place, so an office move is the perfect opportunity to set one up from the ground up.

Fibre vs Copper

From a speed standpoint, fibre cables can carry data up to 60 terabits per second, while copper cables can only reach about 10 gigabits per second. Copper cable technology also suffers from significant signal strength loss over long distances. They cannot send signals over 100 meters without signal amplifiers. Meanwhile, fibre cables can easily cover a 40 kilometres range without any signal booster.

When it comes to size weight, there is no contest here either. Copper cables weigh 39 pounds per 1000 feet. Fibre cables only weigh 4 pounds per 1000 feet. If you keep using copper cables, you will feel the heavy weight when moving them around. On top of the lower weight, individual fibre cabling is almost as thin as human hair. As a result, the cabling is small, yet transmits significantly more data than copper. Thinner and lighter cables will be less disruptive to route around your building infrastructure.

Furthermore, fibre cables are also more durable. They can easily carry four times of pressure than copper cables. Yet, their performance degrades much slower over time than copper cables as well. Fibre cables can easily last 50 years. Additionally, fibre cables use an optic signal, which is almost impossible to tamper. Copper cables, on the other hand, use electric signals, which make the cables susceptible to interference or hacking events.

With all the advantages of fibre cables from above, upgrading to fibre cables is a worthy consideration as a long term business investment.

Moving Network Equipment

Besides network cabling, you also have to account for hardware like switches, routers, hubs, power supplies, data storage, and access points. No matter where you move, these are vital hardware that help your network run smoothly. One option is moving your entire network infrastructure to the new site and re-using everything. Or you also have the opportunity to rebuild your network and security system to your standards at the new location. Below are a handful pros and cons of reusing your network equipment.

Pros – reuse network equipment

1. Convenience

As mentioned before, there are already so many tasks you need to account for when it comes to moving. As such, having to reconfigure a new network, or buying new hardware may not be your highest priority. Maybe, you already have the latest equipment. So why not just take what you already have and bring it with you? Depending on the size of your workforce, this is a viable solution that also helps ease the transition for everyone. Same set up, new space.

2. Easy to Restart

On a similar note, since everyone is already familiar with the old network configuration, bringing your equipment with you will help get your new office started faster. There is no password reset, no new user interface, and no new software or firewall to download. Suppose you have to power down your network during transportation. You cannot waste more time reconstructing a brand-new network which may delay your business operation.

3. Lower Overhead Costs

In some cases, bringing your current equipment (depending on the age and condition) will be easier on your billing department, than investing in a new system altogether. However, keep in mind that you will still need someone to come in and uninstall everything and reinstall in the new location. Plus, it is important to assess your current situation to see whether investing in a new network infrastructure now will benefit you in the future.

Con – reuse network equipment

1. Your Current Network May Be Limited in the New Space

Suppose you decide not to upgrade your network. It is possible that your current devices or cables is inadequate for your new location. Maybe you need more access points to cover larger spaces, or maybe you’re missing cabling for where you want the cubicles. Plus, assuming you moved to a bigger office for more employees, you might have to consider upgrading your internet service provider, as well as making sure your network server can accommodate the new workers. Without accounting for your needs, you could suffer lower network performance by bringing your old systems with you.

2. Temporary Network Downtime

As you can imagine, if you want to move your network infrastructure and don’t want to invest in additional equipment, it is likely that your entire network needs to go offline during transportation. What’s worse is the outage will vary depending on how much equipment you will need to transfer. It might not matter for some businesses like restaurants or coffee shops, but companies that need to be online to communicate with clients or customers will need to arrange accommodations. Otherwise, a major disconnection without a backup plan is detrimental for your business.

3. Components Could Get Damaged During Transportation

Let’s face it, network equipment is delicate, and many of them are very sensitive to movement. If you accidentally drop them, dislodge hard drives or if there are shocks from statics electricity, your network devices could get damaged without you even knowing. On top of that, if your devices are older, it can be difficult to find identical units or replacement parts. Keep this in mind and take particular care of valuables, accounting for potential losses.

4. No Headroom for Improvement

Similar to the first con, if you are reusing your current equipment, you are stuck with the same tech. How long will your current set up serve you before you have to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7, or CAT6 cables or even fibre. An office move is a rare and perfect opportunity to optimize and create a scalable network. A good question to ask yourself is whether investing in new & future equipment now is better than having to disrupt your office again later down the line. Why waste time and effort by reinstalling the equipment now, when you have to upgrade in a year or two anyways?

5. Lower Property Value

If you are a property manager or the owner of your office space or building, you are potentially lowering your property value by removing your equipment. It is similar to bringing your home appliances with you to your new home. Network cabling is essential for any business and removing them may turn away any potential property buyers or leasers. Instead of removing value, you can leave your old equipment and invest in new equipment for you new space using the added value if you sell the property.

6. Security and Warranties

Network equipment usually has 3 to 5 years of hardware warranty and software support. When you have network equipment older than five years, it might function fine, but it is more vulnerable to cyber-attacks or computer viruses. And if it breaks down, you will have to buy new equipment anyways.

Benefits Of Upgrading Your Network

There are so many benefits when it comes to upgrading your network. As mentioned before, moving offices only happens sometimes for each business. As such, network technology likely progressed considerably by the time you get to move. Ideally, companies need to upgrade certain parts of their network infrastructure every 3 to 5 years to keep up. When you are moving, it is the perfect opportunity to re-sale your old equipment and update your infrastructure with the latest technology. That way, you future-proof your business network infrastructure, and you can focus more on day-to-day tasks.

Upgrading your network is an easy way to ensure a seamless transition from your old facility to the new one. If you want zero interruption to your business during the moving period, the best practice is to build a new network server room at the new location first and then move everything else. You power down your old network last. This way, there is no interruption to your business operation whatsoever. Plus, all your network equipment is new, and you can re-sale or leave the old ones to the new owner, instead of moving them. 

When designing a new network, you can take the opportunity to customize it to meet your unique needs while leaving room for expansion to support more devices or other connection technologies. Most businesses have taken this approach, which is proven to be the best choice.

What And How to Upgrade?

For business networks, connection speed, bandwidth support, device support, firewall or security, and wireless access are the typical features you must evaluate when designing or upgrading your network infrastructure. Innovative technologies or product models usually make improvements in these aspects of a network every year.

Speed

To provide an adequate speed or future-proof your network to avoid any future speed bottleneck, businesses should upgrade their network switches, routers and hubs to at least support 10Gbit internet. You may think that you are barely paying for 1 Gb internet to your service provider, why do you need to pay for a 10 Gb network?

Remember, your network hardware is not only for external communication but also for internal communication as well. Today, the slowest computer hard drive supports 6 Gb/s, and the fastest thunderbolt connection supports 40 Gb/s data transfer. If you don’t want to use an external hard drive whenever transferring large documents to your co-workers sitting next to you, you will definitely see the benefits of using a 10 Gb network.

As mentioned in the previous section, if speed has a high priority for your business, you should upgrade your system to support a fibre system. It has so many other benefits other than speed.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is a measure of network data transfer rate capacity. It is different from speed or device support. Your network system might be able to support high-speed and many devices, but without a proper resource management, all your devices on the network might experience slow connections or interruptions.

To better manage your network resources, your switches and routers should support intelligent resource management. For instance, Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 routers analyze all users on the network and will intelligently prioritize connections depending on active usage vs background tasks. With this function, you will feel a significant connection speed improvement without needing to pay for more internet speed. Plus, newer and smarter hardware models would support a high data rate anyway. Overall, you have nothing to lose when upgrading your switches, routers, and hubs.

Device support

If you are considering hiring more people at your new office or supporting more devices, such as security cameras, IP phones or printers, you need to add more network access points by adding more switches. It is wise to also buy larger, business switches to keep your network flexible long-term. It is more of a hassle to replace a switch designed only for your current needs, than simply plugging in a new patch cable on a larger network switch.

If you are trying to support a wider variety of device types or adding wireless access points, you will also need to upgrade your routers as well. As mentioned in the previous section, when you have smarter network equipment, it will help you to manage different types of devices and traffic. In the long run, it will be easier to add devices and users, with limited change in your connection performance.

Security

Security is one of those topics that will never get old. You will always need to upgrade or invest in improving your network security. Cybercrimes have been increasing in recent years. There are billions of dollars lost to cybercrimes every year. Businesses must keep their firewall and any security-related software to the latest version. They need to change their security password every six months. And these are just the basic tasks businesses must do to keep their network secure!

When upgrading your network equipment, please check their security features, such as end-to-end encryption and two factor authentication. These features are not new to the market, but not all network equipment includes these features out-of-box. Even if they have these features, please check how long the hardware warranty is and how long is the software support. Usually, if your network devices are over five years old, from a security standpoint, you should upgrade them regardless. So, when you are moving, it is the best opportunity to check for security vulnerabilities at every layer. Consider upgrading any device you think that could be a security risk.

Wireless and remote access

For businesses, there are more and more applications adopting wireless access. Wireless access is beyond Wi-Fi and mobile devices with which we are familiar. Industries like manufacturing and healthcare are adopting wireless solutions aggressively in recent years. Whether its wireless networks for a large warehouse or remote access to your network cameras, wireless applications are evolving. They might not be very obvious or popular initially, but they will become mainstream sooner or later. You want to prepare ahead of time.

A New and Secured Server Room

When moving to a new location for your business, if you have already done so, you must choose a dedicated room for your network equipment. When transferring or re-arranging a server room, there are 4 main considerations to keep in mind: a sufficient power supply, adequate cooling, organized cabling, and access control. Due to the vital nature of the server, you will suffer severe consequences if you don’t account for these factors.

Continuing on, if you already have a server room with all essential features installed, then it is necessary to install a more advanced access control system in this server room for much better security and more accessible access management. Access control systems are electronic systems that manage access to restricted or sensitive areas with badges or even biometric scans. The main benefit of using an access control system is limiting access to your server room only to relevant and trustworthy employees. It keeps a detailed log of all access history, so if there is a chance of a security breach, the investigation circle can be much smaller.

Openpath Access

If you want to future-proof your security system or you just hate scanning a badge, fingerprint, or iris each time when you come back from the bathroom, in that case, Openpath and cloud-based access control solutions are already available on the market. Both of these solutions offer better security with less hassle for users.

Openpath offers keyless door access. Instead of scanning a badge every time, employees can carry encrypted key cards or fobs in their pockets. These key cards are passive devices which will respond to the scanner's radiating signals. When a scanner picks up a nearby key card and verifies its identity, it will grant access to the cardholder. Users don't have to take these cards out of their pockets and can walk through. Employees can also put an Openpath on their smartphones or even smartwatches. This app works the same way as key cards for keyless access. For employees with access, the door will operate like any other door, but will lock the moment the employee is out of a set range.

The same concept applies to car access management at garages. The gate will only open to authorized vehicles. These vehicles don't need to scan a paper card or put in a password each time. Instead, you can use a license plate recognition camera to read what license plates want to enter the premise. Entering and exiting and garage can be hand-free and friction-free for authorized vehicles.

Of course, Openpath keeps both security and convenience in mind when designing its products and solutions. Their apps and devices have end-to-end encryption. They offer both their hardware and software layer protection. Lastly, their solutions have the latest security technologies against all known access risks.

Cloud-Based Access Control

Cloud-based access control allows you to control and manage access remotely through an internet-connected device such as a smartphone or computer. A typical example would be a residential building where different residents have different visitors like family, friends or deliveries. It is not possible to give all of them badges or to scan their fingerprints. In this case, a cloud control system is the quickest and convenient solution. Residents can easily grant temporary access through their smartphones to people they trust or expect.

For those businesses who prefer not to add more hardware or dedicate a space for on-premises access control system, a cloud-based system could save them so much space and time. Users don't need to worry about hardware setup and configuration. Vendors like Openpath will take care of setup, encryption or software updates. Users only need to manage to whom they want to give access.

When it comes to choosing cloud solutions, your vendors' reputation should always be a crucial factor. There are many reputable cloud-based access control companies in the market. In fact, Openpath is one of the leading providers in the market. Their enterprise cloud-based access control system a friendly user interface, making access management more productive and effortless.

Upgrading Your Security System

A surveillance system is another area where you must keep up with the latest technologies. Security cameras have been around a long time. Unfortunately, would be intruders have also been around a long time and eventually find weaknesses in security. They can cover their faces, avoid camera coverage, paint over cameras, or break them. Therefore, older generation security cameras these days do not deter intruders as much as you think. Even when the cameras capture intruders, due to the low resolution or poor quality of the video footage, it may offer no help to the investigation. So, if you are already moving to a new facility, it is wise to reassess your current surveillance system. To upgrade your cameras, there are a few factors you must consider.

Resolution

The first and most crucial factor is resolution. Your cameras need to support HD quality at a high frame rate so that your footage will look clear and smooth. If your cameras are over five years old, there is a high chance that it does not the video quality to match today’s HD displays. And that’s even accounting for scratched housing, dust and any other factors that will lower picture quality. In this is the case for you security system, you should upgrade to current technologies.

Wide-angle or motion tracking

Wide-angle security cameras and motion tracking are not new features, but they have greatly improved in recent years. Some pan and tilt cameras don't age very well. Over time, some moving parts could move slower than brand-new cameras. You may lose track of your moving object. To have better coverage, it makes sense to find newer models with wide-angle lenses and motion-tracking features. Ava cameras are one of the best security camera brands in the market. They have the best-in-class motion tracking to maximize your cameras' coverage. When they detect motions, they will send out alerts to users about the detected motion. Impressively, they also have the ability to send alerts based on temperature or humidity. This way you won’t have keep checking your security cameras and will know exactly when something is happening on your premises.

Night vision

This is another feature that is not new, but it has been improving so much in recent years. Right now, most new security cameras have a night vision feature. However, when it comes to the actual quality, they could vary so much between different brands and models. Low-quality night vision tends to give you images that are overexposed and blurry. That is because of the low-quality internal infrared light source they use. It does not adjust its brightness to the ambient light condition. It makes sense to upgrade your security cameras from reputable brands if you want reliable night vision for your underground parking garage, storage facility or condominium.

Additional camera deployment

As mentioned before, intruders can easily paint over your security cameras or rip them off the wall before committing any crime. If you can deploy a few extra hidden security cameras from different angles, you still have a chance to catch the intruder or record the crime. And if you have moved to a larger facility, you absolutely need new cameras to cover the extra square footage. Even if you brough your current security cameras along with you, you will want to avoid any blindspots.

Storage system and backup

If you have had a security system for a while, you probably have a lot of security footage accumulated over the years. It is entirely up to the business owners to decide whether to overwrite these data or keep them forever. If you want to keep your old footage, you need to build a new storage server for your surveillance system moving forward.

Also, security hard drives usually have five years of warranty. If your hard drives are over five years, there is a much higher chance of failure. You should back up your data with newer drives and store them off-site.

Conclusion

Moving your network equipment is much more complicated than moving office supplies. These network components are the core elements of any business. It makes sense to consult or hire professionals before you move these machines like regular coffee machines. Whether you leave your networking and invest in an updated system or bring your networking into your new premise, Panopticon will make your move as easy as possible. We can move your equipment and reinstall it as if you never left your old office or revamp your new office to suit your needs better and set you up for the future. Book your appointment today at 416-613-8828.