- Is the Cisco MARS mission going to abort?
- First iPhone worm spreads Rick Astley wallpaper
- 10 stunning 3D buildings made with Google SketchUp
- Open source software ready for big business
- Four reasons to buy (and one reason to avoid) the Droid
Associate News Editor Ann Bednarz covers the latest news on application acceleration, content delivery and more.
Terry Doub faced a familiar and frustrating situation when trying to dole out network services and application traffic to faculty, staff and students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Doub, director of the LSU network operation center, says he worked hard to keep services running without hitting the max in bandwidth capacity.
"Basically we had to increase bandwidth and shortly after it was increased we'd be at capacity again," Doub explains.
Doub knew he had to investigate another way to address slow traffic, one that didn't require frequent bandwidth investments, which didn't solve the university's problem anyway. He looked into a bandwidth management appliance, dubbed NetEnforcer from Allot Communications, to set policies and prioritize traffic traveling out of LSU's network.
"We discovered that our outbound pipe was full, but traffic coming in wasn't affected," he says.
By installing the NetEnforcer appliance between one of the university's core routers and the border router, Doub says he is able to see traffic exiting the network. He has set policies to ensure traffic coming from, say, student dormitories is limited to a certain percentage of peer-to-peer traffic. Because Doub says he didn't want to block certain types of traffic, NetEnforcer appealed to him because it allowed him to limit bandwidth and throttle back specific traffic.
"We create a policy template in NetEnforcer that gets applied to traffic based on the source IP address, so the appliance can recognize when it's from the dorms," he explains. "It will give that IP address the bandwidth policies assigned to it, but only while it's active. So if that user is logged off, the bandwidth will be allocated and used elsewhere."
Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.
Partner Content
Blue Stripe Software
www.bluestripe.com/
Improving Application Performance Troubleshooting
Diagnosing why an application is slow is hard, at times taking days or weeks to isolate and resolve. This paper explains the challenges involved using current management tools, provides a 'wish list' for application management and analysis, and explains the need for an application system-wide approach that monitors entire applications, not components.
Download Whitepaper
Virtual Vigilance: Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments
This paper highlights the impact of virtualization on application performance. "Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments" states: "Best-in-Class organizations are predominately taking actions around improving visibility across both physical and virtual systems, assessing the business impact of application performance and understanding interdependencies of applications in virtualized environments."
Download Whitepaper
Application Service Requests: The Missing Link for Pragmatic ITSM
Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell and BlueStripe co-founder Vic Nyman discuss a breakthrough approach to application problem management. Learn the new approach for ITSM problem management, which provides: Rapid isolation of application slow-downs to specific components for quick problem resolution, 24/7 monitoring for proactive notification of potential issues before end users are impacted and much more.
Register for Webcast
Comment