By Joel Trammell
Soon, March Madness will come up and, like every year, there will likely be increased strain on corporate networks as people want to watch the games online. So wondering whether or not your network is ready for March Madness is a topic worthy of discussion.
But being prepared for the spike in network traffic generated by March Madness is only a small part of network preparedness. Unlike many other business assets, networks are very susceptible to external events.
Most corporate assets can be controlled, and the decision makers in the organization know how those assets are going to be used, or not used.
If I have a building with 472 offices, and I hire 473 people and want give to everyone an office, I have to move to a bigger building. But that’s not something that just happens without warning. Two hundred people don’t just walk into the building one day and expect to get a job. That’s something that I can control and prepare for.
The problem with the network, as a corporate asset, is that it’s no longer a closed system, like it was in “the old days.” The network is now affected by external events – be it a major news story, a major virus – it’s usually some unexpected demand that can’t be possibly predicted and can affect the network with little or no warning. March Madness, at least, can be predicted.
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Network preparedness is just simply a good idea. I mean, when you live in San Francisco, you know there’s going to be an earthquake, someday, even if you don’t know exactly when that day will be. If I know there’s a reasonable chance that one day I’m going to wake up and the world is going to be moving around, and I may not be able to drive somewhere, I need to prepare for that emergency.
So, what is the emergency preparedness kit for a network from a monitoring and metrics perspective? What are the things I really need to be able to answer quickly on my network? If a network emergency happens – and they do, several times a year – what’s the proper best practices network management approach to preparing for these inevitable traffic storms?
Clearly you have to be able to identify not only how much total traffic is on the network, but what applications are being used and where the traffic is coming from, down to an individual IP. Additionally, you need to know, long-term, what normal business traffic is, before you can recognize abnormal traffic.
If you want to quantify the impact of traffic on the network, you need to understand end-to-end delay for your key, critical applications. If utilization went from 30 to 60 percent, that’s not a big deal if it didn’t really impact the key users and applications. You need to be able to measure from an end-user perspective to find out what servers, applications, and network links need the most attention. You also need the capability to see whether devices are likely to slow down or fail because of being over-subscribed or over-utilized.
Those are the four fundamental questions you need to be able to answer in a network emergency like March Madness. Is there a problem? What users are affected? What’s the problem’s source? And can we rapidly adjust our network to eliminate or restrict the traffic and reduce the effect?
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