Tag Archives: Network Traffic

Video: The Exinda Technical Boot Camp

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What’s Your Biggest Networking Challenge?
Are your applications spinning out of control? Is social media chewing up all your bandwidth? Is BYOD causing problems on your network? Do you have visibility of all the applications on your network?

Watch our video from our latest event with Exinda at The National Space Centre in Leicester where our technical specialists shared knowledge and expertise to help customers with their biggest networking challenges.

Got a question or need advice on how to tackle your networking challenges? Please get in touch at info@netutils.com or visit www.netutils.com/exinda.php for more on Exinda’s Wan Orchestration.

Want your network to run more smoothly? Here’s 4 ways to do it.

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MalcolmBy Malcolm Orekoya, Senior Technical Consultant at Netutils

Views expressed in this post are original thoughts posted by Malcolm Orekoya. These views are his own and in no way do they represent the views of the company.

With user demand increasing at a rapid rate businesses are spending more and more time and money keeping their networks running and highly available. Investment is now consistently made in redundancy everywhere. Two or more of everything in the network is now normal practice; dual routers, dual firewalls, stacked switches, dual ISP’s, multiple application server, dual power inputs etcetera. All this redundancy will no doubt keep the network uptime high, but will it necessarily keep things running smoothly?
Here are 4 tips worth considering:

  1. Optimum Use of Resources

What is the point of having huge bandwidth, the fastest network with great big servers everywhere if you cannot make the best use of them? Allowing ALL types of traffic/users/applications (the good, the bad and the ugly) through your network without any visibility, policing or prioritisation of business critical services and applications, essentially amounts to a waste of all that investment that you’ve put into providing the robust network in the first place. There are good and bad users as well as good and bad applications both inside and outside of your network and they will always seek to utilise or take advantage of any open, free or unpoliced resources they can get hold of. As C-level executives, IT Managers, Network Managers or IT Administrators, it is your responsibility to make sure you can make the best use of your network resources to provide the best user experience, while preventing malicious usage and controlling the usage of unimportant (low priority) application/traffic.

  1. A Proactive Network

Historically network management has always been very reactive in its approach to dealing with network problems and network traffic utilisation. In general, until there’s a problem (usually reported by users) to investigate, everything is considered to be working and traffic is considered to be “normal”. Ever thought of a “learning network”? A network that can monitor the types of traffic coming in and going out, identify applications and users where applicable and even inform you about changes in the types of applications passing through your network when compared to what is normal (i.e. the baseline). A network that can monitor applications and server response times then proactively alert you based on a traffic light system “Red-Amber-Green” highlighting potential issues. A network that can provide you with recommendations on optimum policies to apply to your network based on your traffic and not just wait for you to figure it out (usually only after there is an issue to troubleshoot). It might sound a bit futuristic, but the good news is, it’s not. All of these elements that make up “a proactive network”, already exist in the Exinda Network Orchestrator solutions.

  1. Application Performance Monitoring

Almost everything within a network today comes down to two thing; applications and services. All the infrastructure that underpins everything boils down to providing some sort of application and or service to a user somewhere. Therefore it can be said that keeping the user experience good and ultimately the user happy comes down to making sure the application or service is performing optimally. To do this you first need to have complete visibility of all applications running through your network. Then you need to be able monitor the most critical applications to your business (usually productivity applications) and establish a baseline of what can be considered “normal”. You then need to be able to observe when these applications start not performing optimally and very quickly figure out why that is the case. Scrolling through pages of log data will not speed up this process, so most importantly you need something that can do all of this for you easily and provide that information back to you in simple (ideally) graphical format.

  1. Speedy Troubleshooting

By making sure your network resources are used optimally and your network proactively informs you of the performance and utilisation of your network applications; you will already have decreased the time it takes to troubleshoot network issues. Having done all this however, it is important to have a monitoring tool available to you that can instantly provide real time analysis of traffic passing through your network as well as being able to look instantly at historic utilisation data for comparison. This will inevitably speed up troubleshooting and reduce downtime.

Want to know more? Please get in touch. info@netutils.com

If you’re responsible for managing your company network bandwidth we would like to personally invite you to join our free half day technical workshop on Wednesday 3rd December 2014 at the National Space Centre, Leicester, UK. For more information and to sign up visit: http://www.netutils.com/exindaSpace.php

About Malcolm
As Senior Technical Presales Consultant at Netutils Malcolm consults and advises on specialist IT Networking, Security and Service Management requirements.

 

We don’t just shift the tin we lift customer expectations

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By Jay Ludgrove, Account Manager at Netutils.

Jay Blog 2Views expressed in this post are original thoughts posted by Jay Ludgrove. These views are his own and in no way do they represent the views of the company

Ok, so we know we are not the only IT technology reseller out there. But let me tell you a little about why I think we are different. It’s actually all about when to shift boxes, and when to add real value by working closely with customers to ensure they get the most from our expertise and their technology investment.

When an IT reseller is simply focused on volume sales the likelihood is that the customers’ needs and requirements get left behind when the reseller moves onto the next ‘big volume’ order. This begs the question – can you, the customer, only get the best pricing by sacrificing the service?

I have been with the IT industry for the last 12 years and worked on both sides of the fence, both within technical teams and within sales environments and the one question that has plagued me is how does the customer get the best service at a great price?

This is obviously dependent on the customer’s choice of supplier; do they want a technically accredited company to help with consultancy / development / installation / configuration and future needs? Or would this be plain useless to them because they have an in house team who are already employed specifically for these duties?

As a sales account manager that has emerged from a customer service background, I have always wanted to be able to show my customers a value and experience that they can’t get anywhere else and continue to strive to provide the best service that my technical counterparts are able to deliver.

So what about those customers who are not interested in the services that their resellers can provide, they simply insist on the cheapest price? Is this down to years of being ‘sold to’, that has hardened them to any outside help assuming that all sales people are simply out to get the highest deal value possible without any focus on corresponding service levels? Or do they feel that they have gone through the lengthy recruitment process of employing skilled engineers themselves so they simply don’t see the necessity or value in this level of additional support? And what guarantees do they have that they will be sold the ‘right ‘solution and not just the most expensive?

I believe that this is where the reseller’s reputation comes in. In the past I have worked for IT companies that have quite simply told me ‘Whatever the customer needs we can do. Anything at all, just find out what they need.’ I have never felt comfortable within these types of organisations. Common sense told me, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I never had the confidence that they were going to be able to deliver on this and although they could be exceedingly cheap the post-sale service was generally left to the vendor who may have little or no knowledge of the initial requirement or challenge. From my personal experience these resellers are used for price comparison only and are seldom called upon to discuss or help deliver future projects or resolve existing problems.

On the other hand resellers that are focused on service over price are going to lose out on a number of deals when the client is only interested in the best price. For this reason I feel it is important to not only have a reputation as an expert in a few core areas but to continuously strive to deliver this message to customers. Ultimately these resellers will not make as many sales as their ‘tin shifting’ counter parts but the retention of business is higher year on year and the customer’s will generally come back for consultancy, development and for open discussions on how to move forward with a particular project or requirement. When you achieve this level of trust you can truly start to become an extension of the customer’s IT team, with their goals and needs coming first and front.

Working for the latter type of reseller requires some adjustment in approach as you will have to concentrate more on what the client needs and less on what you can sell them. This will mean that some sales are smaller than they ‘could’ be and it will mean that you will lose out ‘’on price alone’’. Ultimately building mutual respect can lead to a far superior service and experience for the customer. I sleep better at night, knowing that my customers got the best technology solution that their money can buy that meets their challenges and needs. After 10 years, I finally got to work for a company that promotes relationship building and value with a great ethos that means it’s never really just about the price alone.

So I guess the question you need to ask yourself is for your next technology purchase are you looking for a Tin Shifter or an Expectation Lifter? I know where Netutils fit.

Exinda: The Business Case for WAN Orchestration

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http://vimeo.com/106288496

Do you need improved visibility & control of your WAN traffic to maximise user experience & network performance? Watch our short video blog on the key features of Exinda’s WAN Orchestration. The webinar referenced in this video will be available on this blog shortly.

WAN Orchestration Boot Camp with Exinda

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http://vimeo.com/100987428

Take a look behind the scenes at The Cabinet War Rooms in London where we ran a free technical boot camp with Exinda for network and IT Managers. The event gave attendees 1-2-1 access to Netutils and Exinda technical experts, helping them learn essential tips to keep their networks running and apps performing well. All attendees qualified for a free network health check. Please visit netutils.com for details of our next technical boot camp.

Users watching sport at work this summer are chewing up your network

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Ok, so England may be out of the World Cup but there is still plenty of sport to watch this summer, and all that steaming video will be slowing down your network. Here’s some insight into how Exinda WAN orchestration can help give you the visibility you need to see what’s happening on your network and how to control and prioritise your business critical applications. (I mean it’s not like were gonna block the sport, right?!)

5 Steps to A Profitable BYOD Program

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ExindaBYODPicsSo when we find useful content we like to pass it on and this whitepaper from our friends at Exinda contains some great tips to help you provide consistent access to corporate apps, reduce network operating costs and enforce appropriate use of the network.

Download the ‘5_Tips_To_Prevent_BYOD_Pitfalls’ whitepaper and see how easy it is to manage mobile traffic and make key apps perform better.  We hope you find it useful.

Are unexpected bandwidth spikes causing issues on your network?

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The Winter Olympics are here – is your network ready?

By Dean Goldhill, Network & Security Specialist, Netutils

Views expressed in this post are original thoughts posted by Dean Goldhill, Network & Security Specialist, Netutils. These views are his own and in no way do they represent the views of the company.

ExindaWinterOlympicsDuring the London 2012 Olympics, 60% of all corporate Internet traffic was utilised by streaming video and mobile devices to access live sporting events. The Olympic Games whilst being a unique event, in some instances, had the effect of highlighting network problems that already existed. The result being that some company networks just simply couldn’t cope with the increase in network traffic as users tried to stream video of the games or use personal applications at work and business critical applications suffered as a result.

But the issues highlighted by the games should not just be seen as isolated events; there are many other reasons why your network may experience a bandwidth spike and downtime can be costly and time consuming. So with the Winter Olympics now in full flow and to ensure Sochi 2014 streaming doesn’t jeopardise your key apps take a look at this blog where we walk you through a typical example of a company who experienced network issues during the 2012 Olympic Games.

Background: The set up at this branch office allows employees to work from one branch and connect back to the servers in their own branch offices. So for all these users all traffic, mail server, Intranet, SharePoint etc. all has to go via the VPN/Internet.

When the Olympic Games started, users started complaining about slow, unreliable service for business critical applications.

And it wasn’t immediately as the games started, it was as the word spread around the building, and more and more people started watching the games online. Normal business service just got worse and worse until about the middle of the first week when users started reporting that they pretty much couldn’t work at all. The issue affected about 100 users in total and that’s quite a loss of productivity!

The challenge for this company was that they had a lack of network visibility, they couldn’t see what was causing the issue and they had no control over how to fix it.

Solution: Following our initial site inspection and investigation we discovered that the issue was that internet bandwidth was being chewed up by people watching the Olympic Games online.

Another factor which made a solution trickier was that the broadcaster streaming service used for the games coverage does not use the video streaming protocol like most other services. Instead it transmits over the regular HTTP (port 80) so the affected company’s proxy server which is configured to stop regular users using video streaming services, was not stopping any users from streaming content like the games.

Furthermore, it was very difficult to block the streaming services because the broadcaster use a large number of IP addresses for load balancing, and we also did not want to be to block the service from the broadcaster altogether.

We successfully managed to find the actual URL for the video streaming servers and blocked it via their proxy servers. This effectively stopped the vast majority of users from streaming the games.

But the point here is that ideally, we don’t want to block these services by using URL’s, we want to block them by using a product that understands the traffic at the application layer (layer 7) and is able to block (or control) them irrespective of where the traffic is coming from or what protocol is being used to deliver it. Regardless of whether your company applications are network or cloud based your network is likely to face performance challenges often exacerbated by events like the Olympic Games or BYOD.

As a result more & more companies across a variety of industries are investing in online tools, resources and portals that deliver continued control, actionable performance insights & user driven application optimisation. To ensure Sochi 2014 streaming doesn’t jeopardise your key apps, download our whitepaper ‘5 best Practices to Prepare Your Network for the Sochi Olympics’ and get 5 tips to help you keep your network running.

  • Assess the impact of sport and social traffic on your business network
  • Build easy policies to manage internet traffic for groups of users
  • Control the amount of social internet and peer to peer on your network

Puzzled by how to get more WAN optimisation power for your pound?

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By Vanessa Cardwell, Marketing Manager, Netutils

Views expressed in this post are original thoughts posted by Vanessa Cardwell, Marketing Manager, Netutils. These views are her own and in no way do they represent the views of the company.

ExindaBlogPics

Welcome back to the Netutils blog. As we start 2014 we have become preoccupied with thoughts on how we can be more efficient, more effective and get better value for money when delivering services and solutions to the business and this got us thinking about how we can help you to make smarter network decisions and lower your bandwidth expenditure.

So with that in mind we kick start our blog with some thoughts on network visibility and this blog post from Malcolm Orekoya, Senior Technical Consultant at Netutils on the 5 reasons why visibility is crucial to your network is a must read for those of you who recognise that real time visibility into network traffic on the LAN and WAN is the essential starting point towards making easier and smarter network decisions.

Read the full blog post here.

Malcolm will be delivering a webinar for us on Wednesday 22nd January and if any of the following sound familiar to you we urge you to register for a place and get some invaluable hints and tips on how you can take back control of your internet links and corporate WAN, improve user experience and productivity and establish rapid financial returns and renewed ROI on your existing infrastructure

  • I struggle to understand what is using all of our bandwidth.
  • I am often faced with unexpected bandwidth spikes causing costly downtime.
  • I am concerned that personal social media and video streaming is adversely affecting the performance of our business critical applications.
  • I am fed up with spending my limited budget on accelerating all applications in the knowledge that some of them are the main culprits for slowing down my network.

Register Here: 22nd Jan at 11:00am. – Exinda: Reduce WAN Costs & Make Apps Perform Better

Your Top 3 Questions Answered on Network Visibility

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[vimeo vimeo.com/http://vimeo.com/71028119]

We recently ran a workshop on WAN Optimisation solution Exinda. In this video blog we share the top 3 questions attendees asked us on visibility:

1. What level of application visibility does Exinda deliver out of the box?
2. Can you get real time visibility of what is happening on the network for trouble shooting?
3. What level of user integration is available?