The best way to prevent network outages and application slowdowns is to make sure the network infrastructure is operating at peak performance.  Outages and slowdowns are often caused by several small problems that when combined result in a major problem.  Network Protocol Specialists will review the network on a per subnet basis looking for these small problems that can lead to big problems.  The result is a report showing the health of the subnet, switch and router ports that are showing errors and a detailed inventory of the devices present on that subnet.  If problems are discovered, recommendations will be given on how to resolve the problems.