* Ipsum Networks’ route analytics
One of the more innovative areas related to “application flow” is route analytics, dominated by Ipsum Networks, HP and Packet Design. This column focuses on Ipsum.
Route analytics captures the real, IP (Layer 3) service path, which is the actual, real-time and typically transient route that a service takes across IP networks. It’s an agentless approach that participates with a network virtually as a router and “listens” without polling as the routers talk to each other.
For instance, route analytics provides true real-time visibility into IP flows and at the same time minimizes management traffic-related burdens. In some enterprise environments using other management approaches, those burdens have been gauged by Enterprise Management Associates as being as high as 25% or more of the total network traffic.
“Visibility” is one of the key words most often associated with companies adopting Ipsum’s RouteDynamics. Whereas most network management products are designed for element-centric analysis, RouteDynamics can provide a holistic view of application flows (as IP flows today – RouteDynamics does not yet identify individual applications) in real-time as they move across the network infrastructure. Today, RouteDynamics supports Open Shortest Path First and Border Gateway Protocol, and is working with Cisco to enable Enhanced Interior Routing Gateway Protocol later in 2005.
Just this visibility itself is productive in terms of providing a context for troubleshooting and traffic engineering – with insights into shifting network topology and such things as whether or not link redundancy is real for a critical service path. With respect to traffic engineering, Ipsum provides a playback capability to understand historical routing conditions over time. However, RouteDynamics can also provide real-time alerts on routing-related issues, such as interface flapping, imbalanced network exits, router configuration errors and router adjacency loss. And while EMA estimates that more than 20% of application performance issues are routing-related, EMA also estimates that more than 60% of performance and availability issues with networked applications are caused by configuration problems.
RouteDynamics’ role-based visualization capabilities support three overall user groups:
* Network Engineering – with IP route diagnosis, planning and troubleshooting and historical playback for “what if” traffic engineering and root-cause analysis.
* Network Operations – with IP route monitoring and application path monitoring, trouble ticket resolution, fault notification and alarm detection.
* Management, including Line-of-Business Management – with trend analysis, hotspot reporting, application and device baselining for operational cost reductions, capex optimization, and SLA performance tracking.
Ipsum’s RouteDynamics is a good investment, even if it is still evolving in terms of analytics and protocol support. For instance, if not properly configured, RouteDynamics, can send a higher than ideal volume of alarms to enterprise consoles in some environments.
But the positive payoffs of route analytics are showing themselves to be more compelling, as real-time visibility into IP application flows can provide a uniquely powerful look at the performance of the application services riding above them and the network infrastructure underneath them. Ipsum’s acute awareness of this value makes RouteDynamics an attractive choice for the innovative buyer.
