July 27, 2007 11:30 AM
No Honor among Thieves
Bandwidth utilization has always been sort of an honor code system. What I mean when I say that, is businesses seek out a service provider to provide X-amount of bandwidth; the service provider fulfills their request, and the company pays X-amount of dollars for that allotted bandwidth.
The idea seems pretty rudimentary, but the dirty secret is that more times than not, folks are paying for X-amount of bandwidth, and are just not getting what they are paying for.
The reason may lie within the service itself and/or the service provider, but what usually occurs nine times out of ten is congestion and bottlenecks on the network. This prohibits the network from operating at its optimal performance level. No matter how you slice it, companies are not getting what they pay for--and that is just not right!
Networks are dynamic, which means they are changing constantly, so bandwidth utilization and throughput are also changing, all too frequently. In order for businesses to keep track of their bandwidth and find out if they are getting what they pay for, they need to invest in the proper network performance utilities.
It seems like a pretty simple solution to a very big problem, no?
However, the problem here is that the majority of businesses choose the wrong type of networking monitoring tool. Whether it is a lack of knowledge on the subject or bad advice, the decision is made incorrectly 90 percent of the time, and it is the businesses who suffer most.
The biggest mistake made is businesses choose a network monitoring tool that passively monitors devices on the network and simulates traffic by flooding the network. That method provides some information about the network, but it does not shed light on what is most important--how effective is throughput from one end of the network to the other?
The proper utility should send small signature packets--with the emphasis on small--through a network multiple times so the administrator can evaluate and determine the characteristics of that network. Administrators can then make the proper adjustments when problems arise.
One utility that works very well is CyberGauge, formally Neon Software, and now, Solarwinds. The software provides network administrators with a monitoring and bandwidth utilization tool, which is both inexpensive and easy to use.
Users can automatically create utilization graphs as well as daily, weekly, and monthly quality of service (QoS) usage reports. All the information gathered can then be easily viewed, printed, exported, or saved for long-term trend analysis and bandwidth planning. When properly installed, admins can receive alerts for both non-responsive devices and for interface traffic thresholds.
CyberGauge is software that allows users to monitor many devices. CyberGauge works with any SNMP-enabled device, including routers, gateways, NAS (Network Attached Storage), servers, and printers.
CyberGauge is available in configurations to monitor 5, 10, 20 and 50 devices (and all the interfaces for each of those devices), so you can monitor bandwidth utilization in simple or complex network environments.
The utility can be downloaded at Solarwinds. The company will provide a quote for any size network.
Again, with the proper network monitoring utility, performance levels can constantly be monitored and often adjusted to achieve that extra performance boost. It should be the job of the network administrator to keep the network operating at a high level at all times and with the correct utility it can be. Sometimes fixing a problem can be as simple as moving a 1Mbyte file off the network, which will increase network performance. Companies should make an effort to find out if the bandwidth they are paying for is the bandwidth they are getting. You'd be very surprised at your actual network throughput--or should I say lack thereof?
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