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Top Network Trends in 2010 (by Stephen Brown)

Author Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for network analysis vendor Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Areas of interest include data loss prevention, network compliance, and VoIP management. Stephen is a member of InfraGard and graduated with a degree in Marketing from the University of Iowa.

A few weeks after the holidays seemed like a good time to look forward to a new year in network management. Gazing into my crystal ball, here are the trends that we see on the rise or meeting their demise in 2010. Rather the discussing obvious trends of increased server virtualization and cloud-based technologies, I tried to go out on a bit of a limb. It'd be great to hear what you think of my predictions – right on the mark or have I been drinking too much eggnog.

Preparing for WAN Acceleration (by Stephen Brown)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for network analysis vendor Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Areas of interest include data loss prevention, network compliance, and VoIP management. Stephen is a member of InfraGard and graduated with a degree in Marketing from the University of Iowa.

What is WAN acceleration?

Over the past few years, we have seen server consolidation occurring for many reasons ranging from security to virtualization and simple cost-cutting efforts. In addition to consolidation at the core, users are more distributed accessing the network from a variety of locations including remote and home offices and smart phones.

Having an increased number of remote users accessing applications on fewer servers can introduce significant bandwidth and latency issues. Applications are typically designed to operate in LAN environments, and may not function well when accessed via WAN. In this article, we'll look at using WAN acceleration technologies to address latency issues, types of WAN accelerators, and key issues when deploying WAN accelerators.

Monitoring and Managing VoIP (by Charles Thompson)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Charles Thompson is the Manager of Sales Engineering for Network Instruments.

Overview

As with most new technologies, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) brings new challenges along with the benefits. The main challenge is VoIP’s extreme sensitivity to delay and packet loss compared with other network applications such as web and e-mail services. A basic understanding of VoIP traffic and of the quality metrics provided by VoIP monitoring tools will help you keep your VoIP network running smoothly.

Network Intruments @ Interop Vegas 2008

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Sam Wang is the Central Region Territory Manager for Network Instruments.

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Troubleshooting Hogs Bandwidth (by Steve Brown)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Steve is also the head geek in charge of their company blog, Network Observations. Steve likes to "get his geek on" anything network security related, VoIP stuff, and anything music and biking related (the kind that requires push power).

Between January and February 2008, we have communicated with 592 network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs scattered around North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. In addition to being geographically diverse, the population was also evenly distributed among different sized networks. This study was a follow-up of a similar exercise we performed a year ago and the goal is to gauge the changing attitudes and concerns of network professionals, to calculate the average time spent by an IT staff troubleshooting network problems, and to determine adoption rates of new technologies and topologies.

As a leading provider of innovative network analysis solutions, helping organizations and enterprises – including 70 of the Global Fortune 100 companies, it is obvious why Network Instruments would want to know what networking experts think. But we have learned that most of all, technologists also want to hear from other technologists. As Mike Barlow, coauthor of the book “Partnering With the CIO”, has said, “[CIOs] want to listen to other CIOs, not the VP of marketing … they want to hear from someone who's had the same experiences they have.”

What we have learned from this global survey is that despite the many new tools for monitoring and optimizing application performance, almost 75 percent of network professionals continue to cite “identifying the source of a problem” as their primary troubleshooting concern, marking a 25 percent increase from 2007. Performance problems are also on the rise with over two-thirds of respondents spending at least 25 days per year determining the cause of these issues.

Our research indicates that network professionals faced the following challenges:

• Continued lack of troubleshooting information: 31 percent cited this as their major network concern
  
• Ensuring application delivery: 25 percent felt this was the greatest network challenge
  
• Application performance headaches: Over one-third cited bandwidth consumption issues as the chief offender, while 32 percent selected application latency and delay issues as the second most common
  
• Problems investigating intermittent errors: 32 percent felt their organization needed to improve its ability to troubleshoot sporadic performance errors
  
• Security and compliance problems: These issues continue to be a headache for three-quarters of respondents
  

Fallon Clinic on Network Instruments

"I have been able to cut troubleshooting down from about five hours ... to merely minutes."

-- Hamid Ali, Network Engineer, Fallon Clinic

Customer Profile - Founded in 1929 by Dr. John Fallon and a team of local physicians, Fallon Clinic was central Massachusetts’ first group practice. As one of the most dynamic and progressive health care organizations in the country today, Fallon Clinic continues to achieve some of the highest quality of care ratings in the country. They are leaders in health care delivery innovation, transforming patient care paradigms, and establishing a new “gold standard” in patient care service. With more than 250 physicians practicing in nearly 30 locations, Fallon Clinic provides comprehensive care for more than one million patient visits a year, and is the largest private, multi-specialty group in central Massachusetts.

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Challenge

Fallon Clinic’s quality of service has close ties to its network health. If the network fails or slows down, customer service suffers. Patients don’t like to wait, so it’s important for Network Engineer Hamid Ali to stay on top of his network.

Fallon Clinic has more than 250 physicians across nearly 30 locations throughout Massachusetts. A total of 2,500 users depend on the network, which has its backbone at the West Boylston site. The core communicates with remote offices via point-to-point WAN links, and local networks are built using Fast Ethernet switches. Although the current network is exclusively wired, Fallon plans to implement wireless soon.

Ali previously used Network General’s Sniffer to monitor the local network. However, as the company grew, he needed greater WAN visibility. Purchasing another costly product from Network General to manage the WAN wasn’t an option. Even if he made the purchase, Sniffer wouldn’t provide the flexibility to analyze both the WAN and LAN simultaneously, from one console. This would mean having to choose whether to focus on the WAN or the LAN, and yet again having problems go undetected and undiagnosed until users complained.

Network Analysis, Going Retro (by William McClain)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

William McClain is the Marketing Communications Specialist for Network Instruments.

Summary

While network complexity and bandwidth demands continue to increase, applications such as VoIP increase performance requirements. Now more than ever, network administrators require versatile monitoring and analysis tools to quickly troubleshoot business-critical operations and monitor security and compliance. In this environment, Retrospective Network Analysis (RNA) tools that let you go “back in time” to reconstruct a failure or attack can offer distinct advantages over analysis tools that only operate in real time.

Managing Application Performance (by Charles Thompson)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Charles Thompson is the Manager of Sales Engineering for Network Instruments.

Summary

Ensuring timely access to business-critical application servers is what justifies having a network (and an IT staff) in the first place. To effectively manage application performance means measuring how well key components of the IT infrastructure are performing over time, and identifying and efficiently correcting deficiencies before they affect your business.

This paper defines application analysis, discusses the different categories of tools on the market, and concludes that a network analyzer with built-in application analysis features is the most flexible, cost-effective solution. Even if your organization has already invested in expensive, dedicated application performance management frameworks, a network analyzer with expert application analysis capabilities remains a must-have item in the administrator’s toolbox. For many organizations it is the only tool required. This is because no other tool presents the level of detail about individual transactions that is often necessary for solving problems.

AAA East Central on Network Instruments

“Observer is like having an employee on site at all hours to manage the network. We’ve been very satisfied with its capabilities. So far Observer has prevented us from experiencing any downtime.”

-- Portia Ulinski, CIO, AAA East Central

Customer Profile - Since its founding in 1902 as the American Automobile Association, AAA is an association of independent clubs that serve as an advocate for the motorist and traveler. It has fought motorists’ legislative battles, protected them against unduly restrictive legislation, and worked against harsh and unjust prosecutions. With more than 48 million members, AAA is well respected for its credibility and integrity and known primarily for providing emergency road service, maps and travel publications. AAA East Central has 56 local offices and 1,500 employees serving the combined area of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and New York.

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Challenge
AAA East Central needed a way to proactively monitor network communication in order to prevent problems from affecting customer service.

Solution
By deploying Observer Suite and 60 probes, the IT team could easily detect problems as they started to emerge, allowing AAA East Central to eliminate problems before they wreaked havoc on the network–ensuring customers were receiving the best possible service.

Monitoring for Compliance and Troubleshooting (by Steve Brown)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Steve is also the head geek in charge of their company blog, Network Observations. Steve likes to "get his geek on" anything network security related, VoIP stuff, and anything music and biking related (the kind that requires push power).

Goal: To obtain complete network visibility across the organization for the purpose of complying with government regulations and ensuring smooth delivery of business-critical applications. This will be achieved through an integrated solution that provides high-level reporting and historical root-cause analysis.

Global Monitoring Requirements

The primary tasks of troubleshooting and compliance investigations are: 1) identifying a problem or violation, and 2) drilling down on the issue to determine what happened and why. The job of problem identification has been complicated by increased traffic and applications running on the network.

Investigations are often like finding a needle in a haystack. The aforementioned added traffic only increases the haystack’s size. And, monitoring large amounts of traffic over multiple locations means the organization has to search multiple haystacks. Once the problem location is identified, network professionals need to investigate at a granular level within a specific haystack to identify the needle. For compliance this means identifying all details around the violation, and in the case of troubleshooting being able to review specific performance metrics and run packet-level analysis.

But given limited budgets and resources, how does a company easily identify problems occurring on a global network, while retaining the ability to drill down to investigate the cause for both compliance and troubleshooting?