Recurring network problems? Acquired a network with no documentation? Let us remedy that.
Green field builds or migrations and upgrades - roll out your new network platforms the right way.
Customised solution and technology training quickly up-skills staff allowing productivity to be maximised.
Knowledge of what works in practice and where to expect pitfalls based on a portfolio of hundreds of migration activities
Real-world experience of large scale network mergers, migrations and decommissioning
Expertise in all aspects of MPLS core network life cycle from hardware selection through build and operations to decommissioning
Multi-vendor and inter-operability skills covering Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, Huawei and more
Extensive protocol stack knowledge covering OSPF & IS-IS, LDP & RSVP and BGP
Solid understanding of how to build and migrate centralised DSL services (LAC & LNS)
Legacy and acquired networks are often problematic because few, if any, current members of staff understand them or are willing to work on them. Often they have recurring issues and obscure configuration that can be an "accident waiting to happen". Whether you want to improve supportability or assess the task of migrating away, network auditing is essential.
Any network of sufficient size and age will contain configuration inconsistencies, left-over test / "temporary" configuration and other surprises. Will the failover work? Do underlying problems exist that aren’t obvious? A link missing out of the IGP, perhaps? Preferred Method’s network health check service checks for all of these and more - we have yet to find a network with a completely clear bill of health!
The bread and butter of Preferred Method’s offerings! From a single circuit to an entire datacentre, Preferred Method has performed thousands of successful migrations. Realise cost savings by migrating services away from sparsely populated or legacy facilities onto new and strategic platforms. Support compliance by moving away from end-of-life software and hardware. Preferred Method creates tailored migration scripts to reduce human error, assist with cross-vendor moves and even ensure compliance with naming / numbering standards.
Vendor certifications have their place but usually cover a lot of features that your organisation doesn’t use and barely touch upon areas that are key to your daily operations. By focusing on precisely the topics relevant to your environment, targeted training can kickstart adoption of a new platform or enhance engineering staff’s understanding of the existing network. Short "conversion courses" allow capable engineers to adopt new vendors quickly and efficiently. Pre-recorded lessons can drastically reduce the time required for new staff members to get up to speed and start being useful.
Whether a greenfield build of a completely new platform or as part of a migration / upgrade to existing services, Preferred Method has helped in the product selection, validation, basebuild and deployment of countless devices. We always like to confirm the functionality and scaling numbers that vendors promise using "as-live" config before using anything "in real life" - many disasters have been prevented! Using lab-validated templates ensures consistency of the newly built configurations.
Decommissioning of live networks, particularly older legacy platforms or any part of the network associated with central management, involves so much more than just turning the equipment off! Usually there are traps hidden within - important routes generated or leaked between environments by seemingly empty devices, a handful of key services relying on a legacy VLAN, a system which may or may not still be used… Preferred Method has scraped away some of the stickiest of legacy networks, saving our customers five- and six-figure sums in unwanted datacentre footprint and maintenance costs.