A Guide to Improving Network Performance

By Morgan Wang, Solutions Architect

Discover practical ways to boost speed, reduce latency, and optimize your architecture with our complete guide to better network performance.

Dropped video calls and audio troubles, payment delays, customer churn, frustrated employees, unfinished projects, lost revenue – the ripple effect of poor network performance can quickly become disastrous for your business. But when it comes to improving this performance, it’s hard to know where to start.

That’s why I’ve created this (almost) exhaustive list of ways you can boost your network speed and efficiency, while reducing jitter and latency. Use it to audit against your current setup and get ready to say hello to your fastest network yet.

Optimizing your network architecture

1. Know where to use the public internet – and where not to use it

The public internet can seem like the most cost-effective way to interconnect your enterprise workloads, but it’s rarely the most efficient way. Not only are your data and applications vulnerable to high latency and jitter due to traffic fluctuations, you also risk bringing your entire business to a standstill from a single outage. And this isn’t to mention the potential security risks that come with placing your data on a shared path.

Using non-public connectivity methods on mission-critical workloads—like customer platforms, time-sensitive databases, or collaborative project spaces—is an easy way to reduce bottlenecks and jitter. And the best part is that it doesn’t even have to be more expensive than your internet connection; by choosing a scalable NaaS provider for your cloud and data center connections, you can use their infrastructure and pay only for the bandwidth you actually consume.

There’s no need to toss the internet aside entirely, though. For low-priority, non-sensitive traffic like general web browsing, email, and some SaaS applications, the internet is sufficient.

For IT teams looking to centralize their internet connectivity management in the same way as the rest of their network, Megaport Internet makes direct internet access simple and scalable, with all the benefits of Megaport’s scalable network fabric.

2. Use internet peering

An Internet Exchange (IX) acts like a nexus where multiple networks—including those of ISPs, enterprise providers, and content providers—converge to exchange IP traffic directly.

While peering on an IX isn’t always an appropriate solution, it will uplift your network performance if you face a scenario like:

• the frequent exchange of large volumes of data between multiple networks
• real-time service offerings like VoIP, online gaming, or financial trading platforms
• regional traffic optimization for better user experiences in specific geographic regions.

Where it is suitable, peering beats conventional routing through multiple intermediary networks by enabling direct data exchange between your connected networks for reduced latency and—you guessed it—improved performance.

In these cases, using a direct peering service like MegaIX will make the peering process effortless. We’ve partnered with the industry’s leading providers to enable seamless, high-speed connectivity to Internet Exchanges, giving you access to hundreds of networks across a shared Layer 2 fabric.

Do keep in mind that IP transit is still required for long-haul, global traffic or networks without direct peering agreements.

Understand the difference between multilateral and bilateral peering to get the most out of your connection to an IX.

3. Interconnect your clouds

A non-interconnected multicloud network means data traveling between clouds will have to do what is known as hairpinning via a data center or remote midpoint, adding hops and slowing your network down.

But when your clouds can communicate directly with one another, you’ll reduce these hops for fewer points of failure, better latency, and more predictable, consistent network performance. This step is a must if you use cloud platforms as a component of delivering service outcomes to your customers, or if you undergo regular cloud-to-cloud migrations to take advantage of best-of-breed functions. It’s also better for your cybersecurity, too.

With a virtual cloud router like Megaport Cloud Router (MCR), it’s easy to integrate your cloud stack by deploying Virtual Cross Connects near your cloud on-ramps to create a private, dedicated line between your providers and platforms. As a result you’ll enjoy more uptime, better latency SLAs, and the control to scale your bandwidth on demand.

4. Use route filtering for your multicloud

Route filtering has a less direct impact on your network performance, but if you need to reduce complexity and overload on your multicloud devices, it will make your network more efficient as an outcome.

Route filtering simplifies your network routes to reduce overloading and latency across multiple clouds by directly specifying which routes you want to be discoverable. For example, a large number of routes in a cloud BGP session can lead to routing table overload, degrading performance and increasing costs. But by filtering out the unnecessary or indirect paths, traffic is instead directed along the most efficient route (while ensuring backup or secondary paths are available in case the primary route fails). The result – lower latency.

If you want to take ultimate control of your multicloud experience, try MCR’s route filtering feature, which allows you to:

• easily control routes to advertise between your cloud suite
• simplify hub-and-spoke network designs (such as routing between peers A and B, and A and C, without advertising routes to peer B or C)
• easily connect specific on-premises infrastructure to private clouds.

Learn more about MCR route filtering in Megaport Docs, or chat to your account rep.

5. Implement Network Functions Virtualization

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) replaces traditional, hardware-based network appliances with software-based solutions that run on standard hardware. By virtualizing essential network functions like routing, security, and traffic management, NFV is a great way to improve flexibility, scalability, and performance across your entire network.

Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) is our own NFV solution, replacing traditional appliances—like firewalls, SD-WAN gateways, and load balancers—with virtualized software solutions. This enables networking and IT teams to:

• deploy SD-WAN gateways closer to cloud on-ramps for lower latency and better performance
• dynamically scale security services like firewalls to meet changing traffic demands
• reduce hardware dependencies and streamline network operations across multiple locations.

As part of the Megaport network backbone, MVE provides private, ultra-low-latency connectivity to your global cloud providers, data centers, and branch locations for optimized application performance, combined with the flexibility of using Megaport’s flexible software-defined network.

Optimizing your operations

6. Use cloud provider tools

When you use cloud providers, there’s no need to navigate your journey alone. All major providers offer their own sets of tools and add-ons for those willing to enhance not just their network performance, but other aspects of their IT management as well.

Depending on what your providers offer, you can use these tools to support your cloud workloads in ways like:

• improving response times by routing traffic through optimized global networks and edge locations
• aggregating and consolidating user activity for risk auditing, governance, and compliance support
• intelligently routing direct traffic through the fastest and most reliable paths across your cloud infrastructure at the time
• caching data in content delivery networks closer to your end users to reduce load times and improve user experience
• securely encrypting, rotating, and retrieving database credentials and confidential information for central management of your security information.

Cloud provider tools are, of course, purpose-built for the platform you’re using, helping you optimize your network performance right to the cloud. Most major providers list a huge variety of tools on their website, but if you’re not sure where to start, reach out to your provider reps for their recommendations.

7. Leverage network observability and monitoring tools

Network observability and monitoring tools give you real-time insights into your network’s performance, helping you detect, diagnose, and resolve issues before they impact end users.

These tools will ideally come from your NaaS provider, ensuring seamless integration with your entire network. For example, Megaport provides various service visibility tools via our Portal and APIs, giving you detailed analytics on traffic patterns, latency, and connection health.

By using these tools, you can:

• detect latency spikes and congestion before they affect application performance
• identify and troubleshoot misconfigurations that could cause packet loss or downtime
• monitor traffic patterns to optimize bandwidth and avoid unnecessary costs
• set up automated alerts for potential failures, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).

With real-time visibility, you can make your networking approach proactive for streamlined troubleshooting and a better experience for your end users.

8. Automate your network functions

When integrated into your network thoughtfully, automation is like a cheat code for supercharging your network performance. You can use it to get fast, consistent deployments and updates, as well as deeper insights into performance data to help you improve long-term efficiency.

While AI is the first thing that may come to mind when you think of automation, it doesn’t have to be if you don’t have the resources. There are other ways to bring automation to your network with lower barriers to entry.

APIs

If you’re a developer, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) need no introduction. This set of rules and protocols can be custom-engineered to enable your software applications, systems, or services to communicate and exchange data programmatically.

For example, you can use APIs to:

• automate failover to reroute traffic to backup data centers or cloud regions during outages
• pull real-time performance data to detect latency spikes, packet loss, or congestion before they impact your end users
• automate repetitive network changes to eliminate human error and improve consistency
• auto-generate IT service tickets to track network incidents and changes
• track real-time network usage and costs for more accurate forecasting and budget control
• automate logging and reporting of network activity to meet security and regulatory requirements.

You can incorporate APIs as little (or as much) as you want, experimenting and pivoting quickly to maximize the benefits with minimal effort.

Megaport offers a public API for access to all Megaport services available through the Megaport Portal. Based on the popular REST style, it has predictable URLS, accepts form-encoded bodies, returns JSON-encoded responses, and uses standard HTTP response codes.

Learn how to automate your Megaport infrastructure with APIs.

Infrastructure as Code

If you’re serious about taking advantage of what APIs can offer, you can adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

IaC tools use APIs under the hood to deploy and configure resources, but go a step further by managing multiple resources across your network with a unified language for repeatable and scalable network infrastructure management. Put simply, you can define the desired end state of your infrastructure and your IaC tool will handle the complexities of achieving it.

You can use an IaC tool as part of your network management to:

• define the desired state of your infrastructure and the tool will ensure the actual state always matches it
• store infrastructure definitions as code for version tracking, rollback capabilities, and change auditing
• manage multi-step, multi-resource deployments in a single configuration, handling dependencies automatically rather than requiring sequential API calls
• ensure infrastructure is deployed the same way every time, reducing configuration drift and human errors.

Vendors’ own automation tools tend to be an afterthought for most cloud services, so if you want to get the most out of IaC, you’re best to use a dedicated tool like Terraform which also automatically manages dependencies between resources, and maintains a state file to track the current state of your infrastructure.

Megaport has its own dedicated Terraform provider to help you consolidate and automate your network management, with official, dedicated support. With Megaport’s Terraform provider, you can easily provision and manage your cloud infrastructure with full customization and rapid automation.

Discover the Megaport Terraform provider.

AI/ML

AI and ML differ from APIs and IaC by changing your network automation tasks from reactive to proactive – for example, predicting potential network failures before they occur, enabling preventative maintenance, and protecting against cyberthreats before they have the chance to escalate.

Generative AI in particular has well and truly exploded in the cloud space. Generative AI models do more than just analyze data and automate tasks, also generating content and responses based on data inputs using large language models.

The right AI solutions will not only optimize your network performance before you ever need to intervene; they can also reduce manual tasks, freeing up your IT team to stay focused on revenue generation.

There are a variety of ways you can integrate AI and ML into your network, including:

• integrating third-party, pre-trained AI models like cloud provider products and extensions to automate a variety of data analysis and network maintenance tasks
• accessing high-performance compute with GPUaaS to train your own deep learning models and perform complex simulations
• integrating new or existing storage or compute resources to connect large data sets and get high-performance processing
• using bare metal to build your own custom AI solutions.

To ease the lift of incorporating AI into your network, check out Megaport AI Exchange (AIx).

AIx is a connected ecosystem of service providers, available on our marketplace, that integrate seamlessly with your Megaport network. Interconnect all of your AI infrastructure, workloads, and providers on our private, global, scalable network backbone to consume AI resources and services in just one step.

AIx takes you beyond just cloud and data center connectivity use cases, integrating AI into your network management to give you more value from your virtual ecosystem. Browse our marketplace to find inspiration on how you want to start (or continue) your AI journey.

Learn more about Megaport AIx.

9. Automate network resilience with failover and redundancy

Geo-redundant paths are achieved by connecting to physically diverse data centers or cloud regions, so disruptions in one location don’t impact your overall connectivity.

By ensuring your network traffic can automatically reroute through alternative locations if a primary path fails, these paths improve resiliency and reduce downtime. This, in turn, improves network performance by minimizing latency spikes, preventing congestion, and ensuring seamless failover in case of outages.

Use your NaaS provider to leverage geo-redundant paths for higher network resiliency and automatic failover. For example, Megaport offers high availability MCR and MVE as well as enabling you to create highly redundant setups on our expansive global network backbone.

You can provision geo-redundant paths on every layer of your network for total resiliency, for example:

• connecting to cloud providers via multiple on-ramps in different regions for uninterrupted access
• deploying SD-WAN with MVE in two separate locations for regional redundancy and optimized traffic routing
• using two MCRs in different data centers to enable dynamic traffic distribution and failover.

Set up your high-availability Megaport connections as Active-Active (both connections actively handle traffic) or Active-Passive (one connection remains on standby and activates if the primary connection fails) to eliminate single points of failure.

Conclusion

Optimizing your network performance isn’t just about speed – it’s about reliability, efficiency, and the flexibility to scale both quickly and long-term. Whether you’re integrating AI, automating with APIs, integrating your network stack, or strengthening your network paths, Megaport’s global network makes it easy to implement these strategies effectively, in just a few clicks.

Book a free demo to discover Megaport.