From Network Performance Daily Editor, Brian Boyko.

Tomorrow officially begins NetQoS's three day annual symposium at Barton Creek Resort. We'll be using this blog to keep you apprised of daily events, to share lessons learned, and provide commentary as events unfold.

As for me, I'll be videotaping Joel Trammell's opening presentation on Tuesday morning from 8:30 - 9:30 am, as well as recording video testimonials from our customers. In between, I'll be on my laptop updating the blog.

This year NetQoS is hosting an impressive lineup of speakers including:

• Dr. Issy Ben-Shaul, CTO of the Application Delivery Business Unit at Cisco, presenting "A Multi-Layered Approach to WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration."
• Dr. Cathy Fulton, Co-Founder and CTO of NetQoS, Inc., presenting "Maintaining Visibility in a world of WAN Optimization."
• Dr. Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, who will be presenting "Ensuring Successful Application Delivery."
• Joel Trammell, Co-Founder and CEO of NetQoS, Inc., presenting "Putting Performance First."

We'll also have some interesting sessions, including:

• NetQoS NetFlow Foundation Course
• TCP Session Dynamics
• VoIP Deployment Best Practices
• Cisco IOS NetFlow
• Monitoring VoIP with NetQoS Products
• ReporterAnalyzer 7.3: New Features and Best Practices
• SuperAgent 7.1: New Features and Best Practices for Incident Management
• NetQoS Performance Center 3.0: An Integrated Approach to Network Performance Management
• NetQoS NetVoyant 5.0: The Next Generation
• NetQoS Product Vision and Strategy
• Cisco IPSLA: A Deep Dive
• Retrospective Network Analysis with GigaStor
• Quantifying Network Performance in an MPLS Environment
• Real User Monitoring with Coradiant and NetQoS
• Using SuperAgent to Demystify Application Performance
• GigaStor Sizing Considerations
• Case Study: T-System's Portal Integration of NetQoS Products
• Measuring the Effectiveness of QoS Policies
• NetQoS Product Configuration Best Practices
• Advanced SuperAgent Spanning Concepts
• Maintenance Best Practices.

In the meantime, we'll be disabling comment moderation on this blog so your posts should appear as soon as they come up. (This also means that the roughly 100 spam posts I get each week will also go through to the site - I'll try to delete them as quickly as I can but until then they'll be on the blog. Don't look at it as sloppy maintenance. Look at it as the opportunity to get low cost ©!@!!$.)

If any of you want to ask a question about this blog or suggest a topic in person for NetworkPerformanceDaily.com, feel free to look me up so long as I'm not currently behind a camera and recording. I look like my picture, have a nametag, and will probably be fiddling with a black MacBook I'm testing out.

In the meantime, here's a rundown of tomorrow's events:

First, at 8:00 a.m., there's the registration and breakfast.

Then, at 8:30 a.m. in the Darrell Royal Ballroom, NetQoS CEO Joel Trammell will be presenting "Putting Performance First," followed by a 15 minute break.

At 9:45, Jim Metzler from Ashton Metzler and Associates will be presenting our first keynote, "Ensuring Successful Application Delivery," which will identify the current roadblocks to ensuring acceptable application performance and describe a framework that IT organizations can use to mitigate the technology and organizational challenges, and improve their ability to deliver applications with acceptable performance.

We'll resume at 11:00 a.m. and follow this session schedule. There is a 15 minute break between all events, and lunch at noon in the pool area outdoors.

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.:

• "TCP Session Dynamics," with Kevin Davis in Darrell Royal A.
• "VoIP Deployment Best Practices" with Jeff Hicks in Darrell Royal B and C.
• "NetFlow Overview and Background" with Eric Hanson in Live Oak.

1:15 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.:

• "Cisco IOS Netflow," with Jean-Charles Griviaud from Cisco, in Darrell Royal A.
• "Monitoring VoIP with NetQoS Products" with Jim McQuaid in Darrell Royal B and C.
• "Network Monitoring, Measurement, and Management" with Eric Hanson in Live Oak.

2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.:

• "Reporter Analyzer 7.3: New Features and Best Practices," with John Mao, in Darrell Royal A.
• "SuperAgent 7.1: New Features and Best Practices for Incident Management" with Tim Smith in Darrell Royal B and C.
• "NetFlow Packet Archetecture" with Eric Hanson in Live Oak.

3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.:

• "NetQoS Performance Center 3.0: An Integrated Approach to Network Performance Management," with Ben Erwin, in Darrell Royal A.
• "NetVoyant 5.0: The Next Generation" with Jeff Hicks in Darrell Royal B and C.
• "Types of NetFlow and Deployment" with Eric Hanson in Live Oak.

Finally, at 6:30 p.m, we'll have our Network Social with dinner in the Wildflower Atrium followed by Casino Night at Live Oak.

By Brian Boyko

Until recently, I underestimated the value of a good error message.

Recently, I wrote two articles for HardOCP detailing my experiences with Ubuntu Linux and with Windows Vista. Both have flaws and high points, and I'm not going to get into playing the "which OS is better" game.

But there is one area, however, which I do want to compare, because it caused me professional consternation and it is one that is usually overlooked.

Error messages.

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Continue reading "Editorial: The value of a good error message." »

By Brian Boyko

With all the (deserved?) hype over virtualized servers, and the consolidation of hardware in order to reduce underutilized servers or replace obsolete hardware, many are overlooking what might be, in retrospect, an obvious use of virtualization – the end-user client computer.

The benefits of virtualized desktops mostly deal with administration and reducing problems caused by user error.

First, virtual configurations are essentially files on the hard disk, and those files can be backed up and restored to the hard drive of the end-user. It’s not a secure form of data storage, but it can be a lifesaver when a malware infection strikes.

Second, it can shorten the “test and deploy” period for software updates, because virtual environments can be configured to be identical and even in a worst case scenario, where a deployed change manifests problems, you can restore from the aforementioned backup.

Third, multiple VMs can be loaded on one machine. This means that if a particular program hangs or crashes, or works fine but is a notorious RAM hog, the end-user can switch over and continue working on a secondary virtual environment until the IT team can get to solving the original problem.

A possible unintended side-effect, however, is decreased network performance – virtual machines simply don’t run as fast as full-fledged installs, and if you have the ability to back up every end-user’s configuration to the network, eventually you may find yourself having to do so. Those with consolidated data centers and a lot of traffic operating over a WAN might not find the prospect of backing up hundreds of computers, including operating system, drivers, applications, and data, so appealing.

Kept on the LAN, however, servers dedicated to doing backup should not be as daunting. Those servers can be maintained via SSH from the WAN, and would not need that much hardware. You could probably repurpose some of those underutilized servers you have lying around – the ones that became redundant when you rolled out virtualized servers.

By Brian Boyko

The greatest barrier to creativity is a lack of boundaries. Counter-intuitive - almost zen-like - but we've found it to be true.

And this is why people play Dungeons & Dragons (and similar games), and why network engineers often spend time putting out fires when they could be improving the network.

Allow me to explain.

Dungeons & Dragons, if you're not familiar with it, is a game where people tell a story and when there's a moment of indecision in the game, the players roll dice to determine what happens.

(And yes, I play these types of games, though my favorite is Hero. No, I haven't had a date recently. What's your point?).

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Continue reading "Editorial: Dungeons & Dragons & Networks" »

By Brian Boyko

On Wednesday, Reddit.com, a Web 2.0 site where people discuss the news of the day, was overwhelmed on its front page by calls for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, locking out all other news stories. And the way it happened provides some interesting observations on Web 2.0, 21st century society, and network administration.

A less cliquish version of Digg, Reddit is ultimately very simple. Stories are linked in order of popularity over time. Hit the up button to vote for a story to be placed higher in the rankings, down button to place it lower in the rankings.

From a journalism/new media perspective, sites like Reddit are absolutely fascinating. Before the advent of blogging, journalists used to talk about gatekeepers – reporters and editors who choose what to cover, how to cover it, and what emphasis it is given. A story on the front page is given more emphasis than one buried in the back pages – and therefore, more people will read it and more people will think it is significant.

Blogs and blogging took this to the next step in that anyone could become a gatekeeper by publishing their own blog and figuring out what they thought was important. Readers also could act as their own gatekeeper and simply go to the stories that they think are important. It removed the gatekeeper as the arbiter of importance.

Sites like Reddit are a logical next step. In blogging, the blogger takes on the gatekeeper role – but it is still as much an elitist position as far as the blogger writes about what he or she thinks is important. Reddit and its Web 2.0 kin allow for the gatekeeper role to be supplanted by a reasonable facsimile of direct democracy.

And what you have is a situation where the wisdom of crowds takes hold. Who better to determine what “the people” find important than the people themselves?

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Continue reading "Reddit’s Tea Party" »

By Brian Boyko

In some ways - not many, mind you, but some ways - the days of 14.4kbaud modems were a golden age.

14.4kbaud isn't much. By today's standards it's not even acceptable for dialup speeds, but it was enough to allow connectivity and communication worldwide. It allowed us not only to participate in worldwide conversations, but these conversations were happening, for the first time, not just among the technical elite and the academics but regular people.

This was the era of Usenet, Listservs and E-mail, of IRC (and AOL chat) and the very beginnings of the popularized World Wide Web. And all these communication mediums had one very simple thing in common.

They used text.

ASCII text, to be precise. Because text is a great medium for communicating when you have very little bandwidth.

Because of that, the popular Internet evolved, primarily, around text, and different ways to get that text from one user to another. And so, for most of the previous decade and of this one as well, text was the dominant communication medium on the Internet.

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Continue reading "Friday Editorial: The Internet Paradigm Shift" »

By Brian Boyko

When your job can be quantifiably measured in the terms of ROI, many companies are finding that the ROI workers bring to the table just isn't enough. We often hear about massive layoffs in the news; we rarely hear about massive hirings, which suggests to me that there typically aren't many.

Add to that the increased job competition from globalization, and the typical IT environment is filled with two types of people: Those with skills so unique that no one can replace them, and those who fear for their jobs.

One of the reasons we were able to open a development center in Raleigh was because of a significant layoff by another technology vendor which gave us the ability to select some world-class talent.

Or, take Microsoft. Bill Gates personally testified before the Senate on the issue of immigration, arguing for more H-1B visas. David Broder at the Washington Post says that Gates claimed that "salaries for these jobs at Microsoft start at about $100,000 a year."

This would be great, except Microsoft's actual filings show that these jobs start at $46,267 a year. In fact, less than 15% of Microsoft's H-1B workers - for 2005 - had salaries equal to or over $100,000.

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Continue reading "A lack of job security leads to a lack of innovation" »

Just a quick note - this blog relies on Google Analytics. Our article on Slashdot got over 30,000 page views according to our internal metrics, but Google Analytics hasn't registered one visitor or one page view in about 24 hours now - and we're not the only ones having this problem. Is Google Analytics kaput?

See below for some threads where the problem is discussed.

http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help-tracking/browse_thread/thread/c2bc3cd809188c49
http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help-troubleshoot/browse_thread/thread/f733f19e15a9c611
http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help-troubleshoot/browse_thread/thread/86070d603f583314

By Brian Boyko

Every year, I watched the Super Bowl and talked over the game, paying rapt attention to the commercials.

This year, there's YouTube, and the good commercials will likely be online far before the halftime show ends. And if advertising agencies are savvy, they'll be uploading them minutes - before - the Super Bowl commercial airs on TV. (What? You think a company's going to send a C&D to get people to stop watching their advertisements? No company is that stupid.)

YouTube itself has a page specifically dedicated to Super Bowl commercials. And that doesn't include the highlights or the possibility of a "wardrobe malfunction."

So since I don't have much interest in the actual game, I, like many other geeks, have other plans this Sunday.

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Continue reading "Friday Editorial: The Super Bowl Shuffle" »

By Brian Boyko

If you're working in IT, I'd like to ask you:

With the increase in demands being placed on those responsible for enterprise networks, how will the Amero case open up threats to IT professionals - network engineers and IT managers? Will they now be held responsible for the "experience" of users?

There's tons of commentary on the web railing about the outcome of the Julie Amero case itself, but what I think we need to talk about is, what does it mean for IT?

This case hints at a possible "worst case scenario" for IT departments and network managers in particular: will IT ultimately be held responsible, just as Julie Amero was, for the material that gets distributed over their network?

Today, IT isn't just responsible for uptime - they're also, in many ways, responsible for the experience of end-users of the network. In the Amero case, this appears to have been taken a bit too far. In this case, there was no record of network activity during and before the event. If the computer could have been shown to access some of the offending Web sites before Ms. Amero entered the classroom that morning, for example, it would have been powerful evidence for the defense.If the pornography sites were only being loaded after Ms. Amero walked in, it would seem powerful evidence for the prosecution. Either way, this case would have been better served if there was an existing record of what packets were downloaded when.

There are products on the market, like those from NetQoS, designed specifically to create detailed records of what goes on with the network - what happens when. Having a detailed record of network activity might have been able to provide some useful and powerful incriminating or exculpatory evidence in this case. Does your organization have such detailed insight into the activity on your network – recreational or otherwise? Something to consider?

The world of IT is becoming infinitely more complex. We are all part of the network, you and me, a network vastly more powerful than any that can be counted. How will this case and others like it impact your role in managing the network and the experience of users?

Chime in with your thoughts.

Brian Boyko is the editor of Network Performance Daily.