The demise of hub-and-spoke networks

As companies move away from a hub-and-spoke network design and adopt either a some-to-many or an any-to-any topology they are increasing the complexity of their network. By the nature of networks that are large and which have complex network topologies, it is not uncommon for the underlying network infrastructure to change, experience instabilities, and to become misconfigured. In addition, the network itself is likely designed in a sub-optimum fashion due to its size and complexity. Any or all of these factors can have a negative impact on application performance. As a result, an organization that has a large complex network needs visibility into the operational architecture and dynamic behavior of the network.

One of the many strengths of IP is its distributed intelligence. For example, routers exchange reachability information with each other via a routing protocol such as OSPF (Open Shortest Path First). Based on this information, each router makes its own decision about how to forward a packet. While this distributed intelligence is a strength of IP, it is also a weakness. In particular, while each router makes its own forwarding decision, there is no single repository of routing information in the network.