Network Capacity Planning

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What Does Network Capacity Planning Mean?

Network capacity planning is the process of planning a network for utilization, bandwidth, operations, availability and other network capacity constraints.

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It is a type of network or IT management process that assists network administrators in planning for network infrastructure and operations in line with current and future operations.

Techopedia Explains Network Capacity Planning

Network capacity planning is generally done to identify shortcomings or parameters that can affect the network’s performance or availability within a predictable future time, usually in years. Typically, network capacity planning requires information about:

  • Current network traffic volumes
  • Network utilization
  • Type of traffic
  • Capacity of current infrastructure

This analysis helps network administrators understand the maximum capability of current resources and the amount of new resources needed to cater to future requirements. In addition to technical network infrastructure, network capacity planning may also include planning for human resources that will manage and/or monitor the network.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.