Air Quality for Your Network

Why would you want to worry about air quality? Because it may have everything to do with how good the network functions and how long the components on the network last.

Heat

If the air temperature is to hot it may affect the way certain components act.  If a mother board of a computer, router or other component gets to hot, they may start malfunctioning or just plain fail. Some products will keep shutting down if they keep overheating.

Dirt

Dirt will cause components to overheat and therefore malfunction or fail.  Some environments contain dust, smoke particles, hair  from humans and animals as well as many other pollutants. A computer has a fan that actually brings in outside air for cooling purposes.  Many computers end up under desks or in an area that can easily pull in large amounts of dust, dirt and other pollutants. Other components such as the mother board, network card and even the power supply may eventually accumulate particles that will make them over heat and fail.

How can you prevent this?

First and foremost, do surveys of the area you plan to put network equipment and especially computers. If you must put equipment in a polluted or overheated environment take action to help prolong the life and function of the equipment.  You may need to cool the area and maybe even filter the air.

Preventive maintenance

Be sure that your computer is turned off before starting this procedure. One way to prevent failure or erratic behavior is to do a periodic maintenance. This normally includes removing the cover from computers and using canned air to blow out all fans.  Be sure to blow out the processor fan and fins of its heat sink.  The surface of the mother board and other components should be blown off also.  You should also blow out the fan of the power supply. If the power supply fails you will not have any power to any part of your computer. This could be embarrassing if you have a critical job to do on the computer.