Thursday, November 16, 2006
By Steve Harriman
NetQoS VP Steve Harriman is attending the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit this week in Las Vegas. It's the first time for the event since the industry downturn in 2001 and NetQoS is exhibiting there because we feel that the role of Networking has been elevated in importance to the point at which it warrants an executive focused event. And, Gartner events are always very educational and well-attended. It's the right place to be.
The speaker for the second day’s keynote speech was Dr. Thomas Malone, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management.
I noticed that a surprisingly large number of hands went up when he asked attendees if they had corporate blogs and if their organizations allowed individuals to have their own.
He discussed organization models and how organizations are becoming more distributed, both physically and in how they operate – more distributed decision making. Successful organizations have found the way to fully leverage the intelligence and creativity their employees have.
Employees who are empowered to use their capabilities to the fullest have more fun and are more productive. The networking tie-in here is that the network is the enabler of organizational empowerment.
Continue reading "Notes on the Gartner Summit in Las Vegas, Part 2" »
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
By Steve Harriman
NetQoS VP Steve Harriman is attending the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit this week in Las Vegas. It's the first time for the event since the industry downturn in 2001 and NetQoS is exhibiting there because we feel that the role of Networking has been elevated in importance to the point at which it warrants an executive focused event. And, Gartner events are always very educational and well-attended. It's the right place to be.
It is worth noting that one of the key themes of the first day is that Network professionals should move beyond the plumbing and be part of the solution to the application delivery problem. The idea that network professionals need to look at response time and focus on end-to-end performance is a message NetQoS has been trying to spread. Here are a few details from the first day keynote to put this into context:
Continue reading "Notes on the Gartner Summit in Las Vegas, Part 1" »
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
For the longest time, network engineers—particularly those at ISPs and carriers—have kept close watch on link utilization to help them decide how their networks are doing. Once usage levels creep above various thresholds, their answer to provisioning and capacity planning has invariably been "boost the bandwidth," as something of a panacea for network performance problems.
But while increasing link bandwidth can (and does) address certain kinds of network performance issues, it cannot solve all problems. It’s important to understand that all traffic must be transmitted from one point (the sender) to another (the receiver) across a network link. Any complete network transmission involves numerous such pairs of correspondents, as messages move from their original senders to their ultimate receivers, and replies or responses trace their way back in turn from the ultimate receiver to the original sender. But all such transmissions are subject to these three delay components:
Continue reading "Bandwidth is Not a Panacea" »
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Gartner Symposium ITXPO was a hotbed of information and debate on the topic of network performance management, and a venue for the exchange of ideas from people throughout the IT industry. We expect this debate to continue at the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit in Las Vegas November 14-16 and we will report on those details from the event. Don't miss it.
In the mean time, here are some highlights from ITXPO:
Continue reading "Network management the hot topic at Gartner symposium ITXPO" »
Sunday, October 22, 2006
NEWS: Network Performance Management Training & Certification to be Offered by NetPerformance.com NetPerformance.com is offering two levels of PMG NetAnalyst® training and certification classes in November, to be held in Austin, Texas. NetAnalyst is a comprehensive, vendor-neutral training program -- ranging from networking essentials to advanced network analysis -- designed to enable network professionals to understand how systems interact, how to best use analysis tools for fault and problem isolation, and how to optimize network performance.
PERFORMANCE TOOLBOX: NetStumbler As WiFi continues to turn up in unusual ways (such as IBM's/Xing's Kyoku-NAVI wireless karaoke machines) locating these devices becomes increasingly necessary. From the system administrator perspective, there may be a rogue 802.11 device operating outside of administrative policy; from the adventurous spirit viewpoint, there may be an opportunity to observe and perhaps utilize 802.11 bandwidth on an access point that remains unsecured. Spotting them for either agenda requires nothing more than an 802.11 adapter and the relevant configuration program, but you will glean only so much viable information using standard issue desktop applications contained on companion driver and installation disks. You can stumble your way through the wireless bubble and determine more usable information with NetStumbler.
TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: WLAN Performance [WLAN connections] are prone to interference and attenuation (degradation of signal) from building materials and other electronic devices that may use similar frequencies (such as cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, or microwaves). The further away a wireless user gets from a wireless access point (WAP), the more likely they are to be affected by attenuation and interference. But unlike a radio station’s audible signal, data that gets lost on a wireless network typically must be retransmitted, if only because most networked applications use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for transport. Retransmission of lost data also impacts performance, and reduces overall throughput for user application(s).
FLUKE NETWORKS: Wireless Site Survey Best Practices As wireless technology continues to mature, new wireless applications and appliances continue to emerge. There is increasing demand for transmitting voice and video, as well as the need for accurate positioning of users and assets accessing the WLAN. Site surveys are invaluable for designing and optimizing WLAN networks to support these applications. This paper, posted on SearchNetworking.com and sponsored by Fluke Networks, provides insight into best practices for executing wireless site surveys.
DEVELOPER'S CORNER: At Your Service or How to Make the Most of Your Web Services "Web Services" has become the hot new "buzzphrase" on development radar screens these days. It seems as though everybody is talking about them and everyone from a small start-up blogger who codes a simple REST-based feed to a development shop stuffing SOAP and XML into every developer's toolbox is working with Web Services in some way. Web Services have become a hot, popular topic in development shops and for good reason.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Way back in 1995, Network World used the economic metaphor of inflation to report The Cost of Network Complexity. While 1995 might be considered the Paleozoic era of networking -- Windows NT was barely two years old -- and the technologies have since rapidly evolved, still the inflation metaphor holds up today.
"The cause of economic inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods, diminishing the buying power of the dollar. In the case of network complexity inflation, we have too much network infrastructure being chased by too few network wizards. Net service quality (the currency provided by the support staff) declines because it is spread across too many service demands.
"When this occurs, there are two means of bringing service quality and service requirements back into balance: reduce the number of factors contributing to the complexity [NPD Editor's note: That's not going to happen.] ... or increase the size of the support staff to handle the increased complexity. [Nope, that's not happening either]"
Flash forward to today and it's clear that infrastructure tools have progressed over time, making enterprise networks more reliable in the process. However, increased reliability doesn't necessarily mean better performance and it doesn't necessarily mean a better experience for the end-user. Today users commonly expect a ubiquitous and instantaneous network. They want it now, anywhere at anytime.
Therefore, network engineers aren't getting much sleep!
Here are three big trends that have increased the volume and complexity of wide area network traffic, made monitoring application performance a necessity and sleep for network engineers a luxury:
Continue reading "Three Big Trends Affecting Network and Application Performance" »
