VDI: Where, Why and WAN
Posted on: September 20, 2011
The benefits of virtualization are clear cut – massive financial savings in the long run. Virtualization enables organizations to use inexpensive hardware as terminals for multiple desktops which lowers costs in energy, hardware, maintenance and licensing. From a daily user’s standpoint, the convenience of accessing their personal desktops from any device effectively accelerates their time-to-value. However, the transition to virtualization can be costly and companies have to cough up now to achieve the benefits later.
Virtualization enables users to access distributed enterprise applications securely from any remote client device — when it works. If the network fails to perform against defined standards, end users of virtual applications and desktop sessions experience sluggish performance, system freezes and often outright disconnects. Regardless if Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is hosted in your own data center, or remotely, all performance issues – and finger pointing – will come down hard on an IT team.
While occasionally hosted on the LAN, VDI is more commonly reached over a WAN connection. If the performance of this link cannot be ensured, there is no point in virtualizing. Due to the nature of virtualization, a majority of stalls occur when employees are accessing their desktops over the WAN. Critical VDI links can become compromised during peak usage and need to be continuously monitored.
While we all know the frustration that slow applications produce, end users have zero patience for latency or poor performance when it comes to their entire desktop. VDI carries the highest sensitivity level of all applications and its success rating is directly dependent on user satisfaction.
IT professionals who do not pre-asses the network before virtualizing, put their jobs on the line. It is common to underestimate how much data is cycling weekly until there are attempts to move it, and taking an accurate reading of the WAN link is critical. Virtual software providers offer bandwidth requirements – but can the network guarantee that that bandwidth is available? Even during peak utilization? Is there space left to grow?
Requirements for a Successful VDI deployment
• Insight into the critical links while continuously monitoring the performance of VDI from the perspective of your remote site end users.
• Understanding of the measurement from the connection of end users back to the server and the ability to compare real-time against the key performance indicators needed by VDI services to perform properly.
• Alerting and reporting on network issues affecting system and virtualized application performance for pro-active troubleshooting.
Current tools used to monitor VDI include Xangati, Liquid Labs and Lakeside. These solutions are critical for monitoring the health and state of the virtual machines or locations where the application is being consumed. This means that the connection between end users and the virtualized servers is often left unsupervised. There may be green lights showing for all the devices, yet the phone is bright red with complaints. When polling devices produce a summary every few minutes, seconds of latency can be invisible on a monitoring screen, but it won’t be to the engineer who receives the phone call. VDI performance is dependent on the links between remote users and servers.
PathView Cloud offers the ability to assess, monitor and remotely troubleshoot performance from a virtual or physical system to any other target across LANs, WANs, even segments you don’t own or manage.
Want to learn more? Visit AppNeta or start a free trial on your network today!
"Many customers looking to implement a VoIP solution for the first time have absolutely no idea how critical a clean data path is to its usability. We use PathView and PathView Cloud to get an in-depth look at a customer's network health. It's like an MRI for their IT departments." – Eric Knaus, president of RonEK Communications
How are you ensuring a successful transition before plugging in the first phone?
VoIP, Video and Unified Communications are highly cost-effective network services. While your wallet may be breathing a sigh of relief, your network is about to get the wind knocked out of it by the weight of VoIP and video conferencing services. Network performance is dependent on existing applications and user activity so network engineers implementing VoIP must take this into account.
In the past, enterprise companies dedicated a separate network or connection specifically for VoIP. If the phones don’t work, your business stops. For many organizations, adding to the existing network demand and performance challenges is unrealistic.
Throwing VoIP onto a network without pre-assessing is like jumping into a pool without checking for water (ouch!). Without a full comprehensive inspection of your surroundings, the results will be painful.
As VoIP moves toward a standard application regardless of business size, network engineers are forced to piggy back VoIP onto the existing infrastructure. And for any network engineer who wants to maintain the performance of existing applications AND ensure the performance of the new VoIP services, a pre-deployment network assessment is critical
An Effective VoIP Assessment will:
• Measure the call load capability of the network
• Identify the faults and shortcomings of the network
• Provide a holistic view of the network’s ability to handle data and voice traffic
• Lower the project’s cost estimates
• Verify service level agreements (SLAs)
• Eliminate the network as a gating factor in the VoIP project
A functioning network does not always equal a prepared network. Issues in the infrastructure may not be visible until the weight of a VoIP implementation crushes it.
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But where are the problems that are going to obstruct VoIP performance?
Three key benefits to conducting Advanced Network Assessments:
1. Test how well the network will perform without deploying a single device. VoIP pre-deployment assessment should look at the current state of the converged network, evaluate its ability to support VoIP and identify the dysfunctions that are restricting performance and the requirements to meet call load need.
2. Look at the life-cycle of your network in relation to VoIP. Generate call loads over days or weeks to take into account on and off peak network services. See in real-time how scheduled back-ups, data uploads and periodic events will affect voice quality.
3. Simplicity. Take it one site at a time. If the company decides to bring on a new location, your assessment process should not start from scratch.
Pre-deployment assessments should be done prior to purchasing or deploying any VoIP equipment or making any upgrades. Get yourself a complete analysis of the end-to end data network, recording important measurements such as bandwidth, utilization, throughput, loss, jitter, latency and MOS. A proper assessment will identify and isolate faults on the network that currently inhibit application performance.
PathView Cloud will ensure a successful VoIP deployment and ongoing performance. PathView Cloud generates a series of packet bursts that are placed on the network in a proprietary manner and collect the information required for a full analysis of the involved network segment from end-to-end
Want to learn more? Visit AppNeta or do a FREE pre-assessment on your network today with the 14-day free trial!
Top 3 Challenges for Today’s Network Engineers? Performance, Performance, Performance
Posted on: September 12, 2011
The job of a network engineer or network administrator is to solve problems; everything from backups to cables to firewalls to viruses. All of these tasks are related to moving data moving across the network in an optimal and efficient manner so that users can do the work that drives the business.
Every network engineer’s job is different but one thing is for sure – with the exploding use of IP-based technologies from VoIP to cloud services, coupled with the corresponding growth in network size and complexity – it isn’t getting any easier.
The challenges associated with keeping today’s overburdened networks secure, predictable and healthy are numerous, but these three related concerns would top most network engineers’ lists:
- Security
- Maintenance and monitoring
- Performance management
Security
Practically everyone who uses information technology, let alone IT professionals, is aware that information security is a battle without end. Some specific security threats that are on the rise include malware targeting smartphones and tablets, the “consumerization” of enterprise applications on personal devices, and the need for security to evolve in line with private cloud and virtual desktop infrastructure.
According to Bradford Networks, Business Computing World and other sources, the top network concerns for 2011 revolve around trends towards “more users” (employees and unmanaged users like business partners); “more mobile devices” (managed and unmanaged), and “IP everything” – the exponential growth of IP-based, networked applications and devices from VoIP to virtual desktop infrastructure to IP storage.
More systems, more endpoints and more access over the network means not only more security challenges, but also an intensifying need to monitor the increased traffic and ensure acceptable performance.
Maintenance and Monitoring
Monitoring and managing network traffic is a top concern in any IT department. This is especially the case as monitoring efforts are ubiquitously leveraged as a way to help meet network security and performance goals. However, monitoring and troubleshooting efforts are often hampered by a lack of effective tools and integrated reporting and alerting capabilities. Many network practitioners are likewise challenged by the need to capture, store and analyze vast amounts of monitoring data involving increasingly diverse types of IP-based traffic, from video streaming to SaaS applications.
In short, as more and more organizations leverage various monitoring options to support more users and more services more efficiently, many of the challenges that arise result from a need to cope with increasing – and increasingly diverse – network traffic.
Performance Management
Managing network performance may be the network engineer’s ultimate challenge. The ever-growing diversity and volume of IP-based services that today’s organizations increasingly rely on all in turn depend on adequate network performance. When bandwidth, jitter, packet loss or latency drops even slightly below tolerance thresholds, services quickly collapse. The more traffic the network carries – and the greater the number of hops between users and services – the higher the risk of poor network performance leading to application failure.
To ensure that users can do their jobs, network engineers must be able to:
- Continuously monitor network performance metrics (jitter, packet loss, bandwidth, latency) in real-time across multiple, distributed sites
- Troubleshoot VoIP, IP storage, virtual desktops and other IP-based applications
- Understand what application instances are using what percentage of available bandwidth, and what IP addresses are associated with them
- Assess the network’s readiness for new services before deploying them
AppNeta’s cloud-based PathView Cloud network performance management solutions provides these capabilities by delivering insight in both directions between your datacenter and your remote sites – through third-party and public networks as well as your own. Delivered as a hosted service, PathView Cloud is both cost-effective and simple to deploy and manage.
Find out more about how AppNeta technology can help network engineers address the performance management challenges they face every day, and sign up for a free trial on your network today!
Organizations making the move to cloud services are well aware of the many benefits like lower startup costs, lower total cost of ownership and on-demand scalability. But many companies fail to take a hard enough look at the corresponding challenges associated with application availability and performance.
For many cloud services deployments, network performance will be the key to application performance. Why? Because every business service accessed over cloud infrastructure is by definition a remote, network-dependent service. Every user becomes a remote user and every office, even the corporate headquarters, becomes a remote office.
Even services-based applications will stumble, freeze and eventually disconnect users when network bandwidth, jitter, latency or packet loss metrics drop below acceptable thresholds. Many of the applications being moved to cloud infrastructure were not originally designed for remote access, making them even more susceptible to changes in network performance.
In short: a successful cloud services deployment depends on your ability to guarantee application performance from the user’s perspective. That means you need to manage network performance.
What are the key steps for managing network performance for cloud service deployments?
One: Network assessment
The first step in ensuring a successful cloud services deployment is to perform a comprehensive baseline assessment of network performance. When rolling out cloud services – or other IP-based services like VoIP, video conferencing, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or IP storage – many organizations underestimate the operational and business risk associated with unplanned network impacts.
A network assessment is the only way to accurately know the scope of the project and its costs. It’s also the only way to know if your network is up to the task of carrying the extra traffic
Two: Continuous monitoring
Users need the performance of cloud-based services to be at least as good as what their current infrastructure delivers. To guarantee acceptable performance you need to be aware in real-time of the ever-changing status of the networks connecting remote users to applications. Latency, jitter and other key network performance metrics can fluctuate continuously in response to changes in traffic and other factors
Continuous monitoring capability is also required to give you real-time visibility into service levels. This is the basis for troubleshooting network problems, as well as for ensuring that cloud and other third-party providers are meeting their contractual commitments.
Further, the physical distance that data must take between the cloud and the user has a huge impact on performance, especially for TCP based applications. This parameter will vary among different public cloud providers, making monitoring performance over time an important step in evaluating cloud hosting options.
Three: Proactive troubleshooting
Today’s cloud-based services are business-critical and ensuring their availability is vital. Traditional break-fix approaches to network management are not adequate to meeting many of today’s SLAs.
Network engineers therefore need a way to pinpoint the exact cause and location of performance degradation — even within the virtual network and servers making up the cloud. This makes it possible proactively address network issues before they impact users. Likewise, if cloud services crash and a plethora of service providers start finger-pointing, you need to know, quickly and decisively, who is responsible for what.
Maximizing the business benefits of cloud deployments
How can organizations ensure that the performance of their network enables them to derive maximum benefits from cloud computing? AppNeta’s PathView Cloud technology enables you to guarantee application performance across all cloud, data center, remote office and mobile environments today. In addition to providing unmatched insight into network performance from the perspective of remote users, AppNeta’s cloud-based Pathview Cloud service delivers immediate time-to-value, affordable licensing and on-demand scalability.
Want to learn more? Join AppNeta on Thursday, September 8th, 2pm ET for the Preparing Your Enterprise Network for Cloud Services Deployment Webinar, or start your own free trial today!
Three ways MSPs can drive recurring revenue with continuous network performance monitoring
Posted on: August 29, 2011
Today’s business services are increasingly dependent on predictable network performance and availability. At the same time, changes to network infrastructure – such as the addition of IP-based services like VoIP, video conferencing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS); the proliferation of Wi-Fi-connected devices; unmanaged elements such as streaming audio– all mean that performance requirements for your customers’ critical applications demand a much higher level of service delivery and quality assurance.
For MSPs, your ability to provide continuous insight into customers’ dynamic network infrastructure is critical to delivering your existing services and ensuring a quick, effective response to customer performance problems. Some key elements to assuring performance for your customers’ networks and building your business at the same time include:
— Providing monthly reporting and immediate performance alerts when issues arise.
— Differentiating your business by moving from a traditional, break-fix engagement model based on remediating failures to a proactive, strategic service tailored to customer needs.
— Reducing trouble tickets; eliminating truck rolls and on-site engineers
How can your business transition from break-fix troubleshooting to continuously and proactively managing your customers’ network infrastructure?
PathView Cloud offers remote site network and application performance monitoring that delivers exceptional network insight, alerts, reporting and troubleshooting, from one integrated network performance management solution.
Here are three easy ways MSPs can use PathView Cloud to get started with new remote, continuous network performance monitoring services:
#1: Network health assessments
Proactive network assessments are a great way to highlight network issues, while showing your customers the value of continuous network performance monitoring. PathView Cloud lets you deliver not only comprehensive, point-in-time assessment reports, but also continuous assessments over a business cycle (e.g., seven to fourteen days). This information can lead directly to a managed services discussion.
#2: “Top talker” reporting at remote sites
Who is doing what on your customer’s network? PathView Cloud enables you to give customers periodic (e.g., monthly) net flow reports that deliver valuable insight into who and what is consuming network bandwidth. Like a network assessment, this information can illuminate network issues while also presenting an ideal opportunity to discuss managed service options.
#3: Cloud services readiness assessment
Assessing a customer network’s readiness for cloud services is a simple undertaking with PathView Cloud. AppNeta recommends running such assessments for seven days to capture a full business cycle. A pre-deployment assessment can save your customers significant time and money by providing a holistic view of their network’s ability to handle additional traffic, as well as identifying ongoing and transient network issues. It also facilitates a discussion of the value of continuous monitoring services post-deployment to validate and ensure compliance with SLAs.
More and more MSPs are using PathView Cloud to realize ongoing revenue streams from unmatched remote site performance visibility and continuous network assessment offerings. Check out the live PathView Cloud demo, or try PathView Cloud on your network today with a free 14-day trial!
Desktop and application virtualization offer a more efficient approach to PC management, offering reduced administrative, hardware and energy costs, along with stronger security. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can also improve productivity, by enabling users to access distributed applications remotely from any client device.
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The expanding virtual workforce, growing popularity of mobile devices, and ongoing IT belt-tightening have combined to make VDI one of the most critical IT services for organizations of all sizes. But, in order to realize the benefits of virtual desktops, you must be able to ensure the performance of the access network that connects remote clients to the virtual infrastructure. Most applications that are being virtualized were not designed for remote access in the first place. So when network performance falters below acceptable thresholds, applications become sluggish, freeze and finally disconnect – leaving users aggravated and unproductive.
Unfortunately, many VDI deployments are hampered by frustrating and hard-to-identify network performance problems. SNMP-based network management tools can only provide information on the devices that a company manages directly, rendering them unhelpful with troubleshooting network performance issues along the VDI service path. Traditional “netflow analysis” solutions are costly, difficult to deploy and manage, and consume massive amounts of bandwidth, making them unsuitable for remote sites.
What is required for managing network performance for VDI deployments is the ability to assess, continuously monitor and remotely troubleshoot network performance from a virtual or physical system to any other target – across LANs (wired or wireless…), WANs and even public networks. Application engineers must be able to:
- Pre-Assess the customer network to understand if the current network is ready (or not) for VDI deployment in order to set expectations and resolve any issues proactively. The assessment needs to understand the specific operational requirements of the selected VDI vendor.
- While assessments are a key first step, they are only good for a given point in time and networks are very dynamic in nature. Therefore to assure success, continuous monitoring of key network performance indicators (KPIs) that are critical to the successful delivery of VDI services is essential. These include total, consumed and available capacity, network utilization, latency, packet loss and jitter. It’s vital that the monitoring be able to understand the network in totality (i.e., in the same way the VDI infrastructure will leverage the network…) and not affect production VDI network traffic.
- Compare real-time network performance with the KPI values that virtual desktop services need to function properly, in order to ensure overall Quality of Service. When differences do appear, alert key operations staff to any SLA violations and enable intelligent diagnostics to understand the where and the why in order to reduce meantime to repair. AppNeta has the experience and expertise to know the exact performance thresholds needed for all major vendors to assure success with the VDI performance.
How can network engineers gain a real-time view into network performance between remote users and virtualized servers – and respond more quickly to their frustrated end users? AppNeta’s PathView Cloud technology offers instant value and immediate insight to identify whether the cause of poor performance resides along the network or within the VDI. By enabling the proactive monitoring of access networks against KPIs, PathView Cloud lets you troubleshoot and pinpoint the performance problems of virtualized applications at remote sites so you can ensure QoS for users.
Want to learn more? Check out the Live Demo or start a FREE trial today!
5 Reasons Why Healthcare Organizations Need Network Performance Management
Posted on: August 18, 2011
- In: AppView
- 2 Comments
From the largest regional medical centers to small provider offices, today’s healthcare organizations depend on network sensitive applications. Electronic Health Records (EHR), ePrescriptions, web-based clinical records, online medical registries, desktop virtualization, VoIP, IP storage, cloud–based system, Software-as-a-Service — all of these critical applications rely on network performance.
When bandwidth, latency and other key parameters fall below acceptable thresholds, network dependent services abruptly become unusable. This potentially compromises not only business efficiency, but also patient care. Network performance management has thus become one of IT’s most vital functions across the healthcare sector. As Dr. John Halamka points out in his blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO,“As we all rollout EHRs to small provider offices, often with challenging internet connections, remote monitoring of cloud network performance becomes even more critical.”
Here are five key reasons why every healthcare provider must be able to monitor and manage network performance:
- You need to quickly find and fix network performance problems before they impact patient care or confidentiality.
- You want to minimize problems associated with unpredictable connectivity to centralized data, which frustrate and compromise the efficiency of overworked clinical and clerical staff whose time is so valuable.
- You are charged with ensuring that the migration and consolidation of electronic health records, as well as the rollout of new, network-dependent services like video conferencing, goes smoothly and does not negatively impact existing applications.
- You are looking to optimize the performance of an ever-growing number of wireless devices from tablet PCs to smartphones to wearable medical devices like heart monitors.
- Any healthcare provider’s ability to successfully leverage cloud computing, IT-as-a-service and similar initiatives depends on its ability to guarantee application service levels from the user’s perspective.
Unfortunately, many network professionals responsible for delivering site-to-site access to clinical data lack visibility into the various WANs, remote LANs and service provider clouds that connects centralized resources to remote offices. How can you achieve the network performance insight you need to ensure service levels across your IP-based application portfolio?
AppNeta’s PathView Cloud suite of network performance management solutions solve this problem by providing remote, end-to-end, bi-directional visibility across all the networks (even those you don’t own) between your datacenters, those of your service providers, and users at clinics and other remote sites. With PathView Cloud you can continuously monitor and troubleshoot network performance “from anywhere to anywhere,” ensure compliance with SLAs, and quickly and accurately assess your network’s readiness for even more IP-based services.
To learn more about how AppNeta technology can give healthcare organizations the insight they need to ensure predictable access to EHR, virtual desktops, IP storage and other business-critical, network-dependent applications, visit www.appneta.com. Or, sign up for a free trial on your own network here.
These days practically every organization depends on multiple IP-based services, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based applications, VoIP, video conferencing, virtual desktops and IP storage. All these critical services depend on network performance. Today’s IP-based services operate within a narrow Quality of Service (QoS) range. When network bandwidth, latency, jitter and/or packet loss parameters drift outside those tight limits, critical business services are abruptly disrupted – we’ve all experienced the frustration from dropped calls, stalled teleconference and slow network access to Citrix and virtualized desktops.
To deliver the service levels that modern IP-based business applications require — across a distributed infrastructure — network administrators need instant, real-time insight into all the key network performance metrics from and at any location on the network. This enables them to pinpoint network problems accurately and rapidly. It is the only way to know what users are actually experiencing, and to verify QoS.
Traditionally, achieving this necessary level of insight into network performance required costly technology investments, as well as a high degree of process complexity for administrators. Few organizations can justify those kinds of capital expenses in today’s financial climate. Businesses are looking for rapid time-to-value on their IT investments;, this is the very reason that cloud computing, SaaS deployments and other IP-based services have become so popular so quickly in the first place.
Besides seeking rapid time-to-value, companies also need to know that the IT investments they make are proven and will generate a high return on investment (ROI). Many organizations are unwilling to deploy new IT management systems unless they are certain they will help solve real-world business problems and add real business value.
To address customers’ requirements for rapid time-to-value and verifiably high ROI, AppNeta recently launched PathView Cloud Trial Express. PathView Cloud enables network engineers and managed service providers (MSPs) to continuously monitor their networks and find and fix problems within minutes of deployment.
PathView Cloud’s network performance management capabilities include
- Real-time monitoring and analysis of performance for applications like VoIP, video conferencing and virtualized desktops
- Active troubleshooting of bandwidth utilization and QoS verification
- Advanced network performance assessment and reporting
- The ability to test and assess your network’s readiness for major infrastructure changes, such as deployment of VoIP, video conferencing or other IP-based services
The PathView Cloud TrialExpress offer includes a trial PathView microAppliance, weekly support workshops, and a one-on-one session with an AppNeta engineer. The trial period lasts fourteen days, and signup takes just 30 seconds online
To learn more about how PathView Cloud TrialExpress can deliver instant value and unequaled network performance insight to your organization, visit www.appneta.com.
Managing Network Performance for High Security Networks and Private Clouds
Posted on: August 9, 2011
- In: AppView
- 2 Comments
Why are more and more organizations building their own clouds, often in addition to leveraging the cost and scalability advantages of private cloud services? For many heavily regulated businesses, such as financial services and healthcare firms, demands for the highest levels of security for sensitive data have made private cloud alternatives more appealing. Private clouds also optimize the ability to dynamically allocate IT resources across business units, and can help ensure that capacity demands at peak times don’t overwhelm the resources an organization can access via public clouds.
For any organization that seeks to move business-critical services onto private cloud infrastructure, network performance becomes a “gating factor” that can make or break the success of private cloud deployments. Why? Because every cloud-based application is by definition a remote, network-dependent application – even if the cloud it runs on is in your data center. Likewise, all users of cloud-based applications are by definition remote users, because they are remote from where the services are being delivered.
To get the most from your cloud computing investments, you must be able to predictably and efficiently manage network performance. It is therefore imperative that today’s organizations continuously monitor and proactively troubleshoot their distributed and cloud-based networks. You need to rapidly pinpoint the exact location and cause of performance degradation, even within your virtualized cloud infrastructure, to ensure service quality for cloud-based applications like Unified Communications, virtual desktops and IP storage.
The challenges associated with managing the performance of cloud-based networks and other IP-based networks have traditionally been cost and complexity. SNMP-based tools are great for monitoring the health of network devices like routers and switches, but they are not designed to tell you how well the network is doing at delivering applications. Traditional netflow analysis tools are dependent on having the right network hardware in place and are labor-intensive to deploy and manage.
AppNeta has revolutionized network performance management for businesses of all sizes with its award-winning PathView Cloud solution. This cost-effective, zero administration, cloud-based service offers active bandwidth monitoring and end-to-end QoS verification, providing comprehensive performance insight to any IP address over any LAN, WAN, VPN or the Internet. 
Now AppNeta’s PathView Private Cloud offers all the business benefits and instant time-to-value of its hosted solution in a secure, private deployment model. PathView Private Cloud can be implemented in minutes, and no data ever leaves the customer’s network. PathView Private Cloud is delivered via a purpose-built 1U rack mount server appliance, which is included with the subscription.
Check out this 2-minute video to learn more, or sign up for a free trial of PathView Cloud! www.appneta.com.
The reach and popularity of video conferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration services is exploding, enabling business to happen 24×7 around the world. But, if you’re a consumer or provider of these increasingly business-critical applications, you know they depend entirely on one thing: network performance.
IP-based videoconferencing requires high-performance WAN links. This class of applications operates within a narrow Quality of Service (QoS) window. If network bandwidth, latency, packet loss and/or jitter move outside that limited range, performance is disrupted – and conferences dropped or disrupted.
How can organizations deliver the excellent network service quality that video conferencing – along with so many other crucial applications, like cloud services, VoIP, IP storage and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) – require? What does it take to ensure that network performance and QoS stays within that limited range, across an organization’s entire distributed network infrastructure and despite fluctuations in demand?
Many years of experience with customers, including service providers and some of the world’s largest enterprises, show that these are the four key capabilities required:
- The ability to continuously monitor all the key network performance metrics (bandwidth, latency, packet loss and jitter) relative to service levels from any location. This is the only way to understand what your users of video conferencing and other IP-based applications are actually experiencing, in real-time.
- The ability to monitor network performance all along the service delivery path – even over networks you don’t own. This capability enables you to pinpoint the exact location and cause of performance degradation. It also eliminates the confusion and finger-pointing that can typify network problem resolution. Also, like other IP-based services, the performance of video conferencing services is greatly impacted by the distance packets must travel. So the ability to monitor the entire path enables you to compare performance across multiple providers.
- Visibility into all the IP-based applications that are running on the network at any time, and what IP addresses are associated with them. This lets you see how many video conferences (and other bandwidth-intensive IP-based application instances; e.g., streaming audio, BitTorrent sessions, Skype calls) are consuming available bandwidth.
- Remote site packet capture and analysis. Relative to video conferencing performance, these capabilities help analyze network problems, monitor WAN bandwidth utilization, gather and report network statistics, and more. Of course, packet capture is also useful for detecting network intrusion attempts, detecting network misuse, filtering suspect network content, etc.
How can your organization quickly and affordably acquire these advanced diagnostic capabilities? Consider the complex network performance management challenges of a business like BCS Global, a leading worldwide provider of managed video conferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration services. This provider must ensure service quality 24×7 across its globally distributed customer base.
BCS Global recently named AppNeta as its network monitoring and WAN performance partner for video conferencing services delivered to thousands of managed endpoints. They made this choice because only AppNeta’s award-winning PathView Cloud suite of performance management services offers all four levels of insight needed to ensure optimal network performance. As an AppNeta partner, BCS Global will leverage PathView Cloud to ensure optimal performance of video conferencing services — offering its customers unmatched insight and time-to-value, while also making sure they get maximum value from their video conferencing investments.
To learn how AppNeta technology can help your organization meet the performance demands of today’s distributed network infrastructure and network-dependent applications like video conferencing, visit www.appneta.com or sign up for a free trial!
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