Most businesses don’t think about their network until something breaks. A VoIP call drops mid-sentence, a file transfer crawls, or an entire branch office goes dark for an hour. That’s usually when someone starts Googling “managed network services” and wondering what they’ve been missing.
Here’s the thing: managed network services aren’t magic. They’re a combination of monitoring, hardware management, configuration expertise, and proactive maintenance that keeps your infrastructure running the way it should. But the specifics matter a lot more than the marketing language, so let’s break down what you’re actually paying for.
What Managed Network Services Include
A managed network engagement typically covers several core areas. Not every provider bundles them the same way, but here’s what a solid agreement looks like:
Network Monitoring and Alerting
This is the foundation. Your provider deploys monitoring agents across your switches, routers, access points, and firewalls to track uptime, bandwidth utilization, error rates, and device health.
The tools vary by provider. Auvik has become popular with MSPs because it auto-discovers network topology and gives a visual map of your environment. Datto RMM (formerly Autotask) bundles network monitoring with endpoint management. SolarWinds and PRTG are common in larger environments where you need granular SNMP polling and NetFlow analysis.
What matters isn’t the tool — it’s the alerting thresholds and response process behind it. A good provider will catch a switch port flapping at 2 AM and have it resolved before your team arrives at 8. A mediocre one will send you an email about it three days later.
Firewall and Security Appliance Management
Your firewall is the single most important piece of network hardware you own, and it’s also the most commonly misconfigured. Managed firewall services cover rule management, firmware updates, VPN tunnel configuration, and threat monitoring.
The dominant players in the SMB and mid-market space are Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX (Cisco’s cloud-managed line), and Palo Alto Networks for organizations that need next-gen threat prevention. Each has tradeoffs:
- Fortinet offers the best price-to-performance ratio and solid UTM (Unified Threat Management) features. A FortiGate 60F handles a 50-person office comfortably and runs around $700-$1,200 with a 3-year security subscription.
- Meraki MX is dead simple to manage through Cisco’s cloud dashboard, which makes it a favorite for multi-site deployments. The downside is licensing costs — you’re paying annually, and if the license lapses, the hardware becomes a paperweight.
- Palo Alto is overkill for most small businesses, but if you’re in a regulated industry (healthcare, finance), the application-layer visibility and threat intelligence are worth the premium.
Your managed network provider should be handling firmware updates, reviewing firewall logs for anomalies, and adjusting rules as your environment changes — not just setting it and forgetting it.
WiFi Management
Wireless networks are deceptively complicated. A 50-person office with concrete walls, a warehouse section, and a conference room full of video calls needs more than a consumer router from Best Buy.
Enterprise WiFi platforms like Meraki MR, Aruba Instant On, UniFi (Ubiquiti), and Ruckus provide centralized management, band steering, client isolation, and roaming support. A managed network provider handles access point placement, channel optimization (avoiding co-channel interference on 2.4 GHz), SSID segmentation (separate networks for corporate devices, guest access, and IoT), and ongoing performance tuning.
A common scenario: a client complains about WiFi dropping in their conference room during all-hands meetings. The issue isn’t bandwidth — it’s that 40 devices are hitting a single access point because nobody did a proper heat map survey. A managed provider catches this during deployment rather than after six months of complaints.
QoS Configuration
Quality of Service rules prioritize certain traffic types over others. This matters most for VoIP (Teams, Zoom, RingCentral) and real-time applications that can’t tolerate latency or jitter.
Proper QoS configuration marks voice traffic with DSCP EF (Expedited Forwarding), video with AF41, and ensures bulk data transfers don’t starve interactive sessions. Without QoS, a large file upload from accounting can make the CEO’s video call look like a slideshow.
Most managed providers configure QoS at both the router/firewall level and the switch level. If you’re running a Cisco or Meraki stack, this is relatively straightforward. Mixed-vendor environments take more work.
SD-WAN vs. MPLS: The Connectivity Decision
If you have multiple offices, you’ve probably encountered the SD-WAN vs. MPLS conversation. Here’s the honest comparison:
MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)
MPLS gives you a private, carrier-managed WAN with guaranteed bandwidth and low latency. It’s been the gold standard for branch connectivity for 20 years. The downside is cost — a 100 Mbps MPLS circuit can run $1,000-$3,000/month depending on geography, and provisioning takes weeks to months.
MPLS still makes sense for organizations with strict latency requirements (real-time trading, certain healthcare applications) or in areas with unreliable internet service.
SD-WAN (Software-Defined WAN)
SD-WAN uses commodity internet circuits (cable, fiber, LTE) and applies intelligent routing on top. Products like Fortinet SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN, VMware VeloCloud, and Cradlepoint can bond multiple connections, route traffic based on application type, and fail over automatically when a circuit goes down.
A typical SD-WAN deployment at a branch office might combine a 500 Mbps fiber circuit ($200-$500/month) with a 4G/5G backup ($50-$100/month) and achieve better real-world performance than a $2,000/month MPLS link. The SD-WAN appliance itself runs $500-$2,000 depending on throughput requirements, plus licensing.
For most businesses with 2-10 locations, SD-WAN is the right call. You get redundancy, better bandwidth economics, and the ability to route cloud-bound traffic (Microsoft 365, Salesforce) directly to the internet rather than backhauling it through a central data center.
Real Scenario: Setting Up a 50-Person Office Network
Here’s what a typical managed network deployment looks like for a 50-person professional services firm moving into new office space:
Hardware:
- 1x Fortinet FortiGate 60F firewall (~$1,000)
- 2x 48-port PoE managed switches, such as Meraki MS225 or Cisco Catalyst (~$3,000-$5,000 each)
- 4-6 enterprise access points, such as Meraki MR36 or Aruba AP-505 (~$500-$800 each)
- Structured cabling: ~$150-$250 per drop, figure 60-75 drops total
Monthly managed services:
- Network monitoring, firewall management, WiFi management: $500-$1,500/month depending on scope
- Internet circuit (1 Gbps fiber): $300-$800/month depending on market
Total first-year cost: Roughly $30,000-$50,000 including hardware, cabling, and managed services. That sounds like a lot until you compare it to a full-time network engineer at $85,000-$120,000/year plus benefits.
Branch Office Connectivity
For a company with a headquarters and three branch offices, managed network services start delivering serious value. The provider handles:
- Site-to-site VPN tunnels or SD-WAN overlay connecting all locations
- Centralized policy management so firewall rules and QoS settings are consistent across sites
- Circuit monitoring with automated failover to backup connections
- Standardized hardware so replacement parts can be shipped overnight
Without managed services, each branch is its own island — different equipment, different configurations, and nobody who remembers why the router in the Chattanooga office has a weird static route that breaks everything when it reboots.
What to Look For in a Managed Network Provider
Not all providers are equal. Ask these questions before signing:
- What monitoring platform do you use, and what are the default alerting thresholds? If they can’t answer this specifically, they’re probably not monitoring proactively.
- What’s your mean time to respond (MTTR) for a network outage? Anything over 30 minutes for a critical alert is too slow.
- Do you manage firmware updates on a regular schedule? Unpatched network equipment is one of the most common attack vectors.
- Can you provide a network diagram of my environment? If they can’t show you a current topology map, they don’t have real visibility into your network.
- What happens when we need changes? Understanding the change management process — how you request a new firewall rule, a VLAN addition, or a WiFi SSID change — tells you a lot about how responsive they’ll be day-to-day.
Getting Your Network Under Professional Management
A well-managed network is one of those things you stop noticing because it just works. Calls don’t drop. Files transfer at the speed you’d expect. Branch offices stay connected. And when something does go wrong, someone is already working on it before you pick up the phone.
If your network has grown organically with consumer-grade equipment, inconsistent configurations, or the “it works, don’t touch it” philosophy, a managed network engagement is the fastest way to professionalize your infrastructure.
Exodata provides managed network services for businesses across Nashville and beyond — from initial network design and hardware selection through ongoing monitoring, security management, and performance optimization. Reach out to our team to discuss what your network actually needs.