1-Providing test and deployment environment is the best solution but it’s not suitable in many cases like hardware devices frame-wares, so I start with the lower priority zone/services. 2- The second vital part is making role back plan to reduce cost. 3- Perform change in times of having lower traffic is another part of my strategy. 4- continuous pre and post monitoring is the other. 5- Making other stakeholders informed is another one because of existing practical people in each sections can reduce the time of down time. At last we should be aware that down time can probably happen but it must be resolved as soon as possible.

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To prevent downtime during a network upgrade, plan carefully and schedule the upgrade outside peak hours. Ensure a redundant infrastructure and high-availability solutions to allow automatic failover if issues arise. Use load balancing to manage traffic distribution flexibly. Test the upgrade in a staging environment beforehand and implement monitoring to detect problems immediately. A clear rollback plan and communication with all affected departments complete the preparation. This way, you can maintain operations throughout the upgrade.