• Network Performance Daily: Best Practices for Monitoring Business Transactions, part 1 of 2
• Byte and Switch: Cisco Salvo in 4-Gig FC - Storage Networking News Analysis
• Network World: Ethernet, media focus force telecom shift - Part 1
• Network World: NYC telecom journey Day 2: Getting sucked into IP's black hole and awaiting a network endpoint explosion - Part 2
• Macehiter Ward-Dutton: IT service management - road maps, not short cuts
• erp4it: ITIL and ITSM politics

Continue reading "Daily Links: Business transaction monitoring, new Cisco switch, network endpoint explosion, plus more" »

• ComputerWorld: Gartner meeting sees big network role
• sFlow vs. NetFlow: What is the big difference and which should you support?
• GigaOM » Is ADSL2+ Bad for VoIP?
• Business Communications Review Magazine - Looming Crisis In The WAN?
• dougmclure.net: Network Performance Blog

Continue reading "Network Performance Daily Links 2006-11-17" »

• CIO: Cisco CEO Preaches Networks, Collaboration
• SearchCIO: IT execs eager to exploit Web 2.0 wave
• ZDNet.com/Enterprise Web 2.0: Nine ideas for IT managers considering Enterprise 2.0
• Aswath Weblog: Intelligence at the End

Continue reading "Network Performance Daily Links 2006-10-26" »

• SpeedTest
• VoIP Loop: MPLS and VoIP Services
• Network Dictionary Blog
• CNET News.com: The next information revolution

Continue reading "Network Performance Daily Links 2006-10-23" »

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" »