NHS trusts take control of network traffic management

NHS trusts improve network traffic

Lincolnshire NHS Shared Service (LSS) is eliminating bottlenecks in its network by improving traffic management.

The organisation, made up of two NHS trusts, a primary care trust and an ambulance service, runs a wide area network covering 83 sites with 4,500 PCs serving 7,000 users.

LSS needed to minimise expensive bandwidth use and identify which users and applications caused the most traffic on the network.

IT services company Teneo rolled out software from network services group Plixer, which delivers detailed real-time reporting to show each user's bandwidth usage and peaks and troughs in network traffic.

The system prevents wasted bandwidth and improves transparency, said Tony Arnold, senior network and systems manager at LSS.

"The software is exceptionally cost effective and really helps us," he said.

"We can easily pinpoint any issues on our network and can drill down instantly using the software. We can’t afford to waste our bandwidth and this ensures we are always on top of wasteful processes on our network.”