technology spotlight

NetFlow and Co.

Together with convergence and MPLS, Cisco's NetFlow has been one of the most heavily-marketed technologies in network management. It has somehow acquired a reputation as the answer to everything, enabling administrators to see where their network traffic has come from, where it's going, and what applications make it up. In practice, there are some caveats. NetFlow was first released in 1996 - simpler times, when networks were smaller and applications better behaved.

The technology has evolved, with NetFlow 9 now providing a separate 'open' development in IPFIX, but most improvements have concentrated on trying to reduce the load NetFlow places on the device doing the work, cutting the not insubstantial network and CPU overheads. NetFlow's basic way of inspecting packets means it often can't identify certain applications, like VoIP, FTP or Peer-to-Peer traffic, and leaves the user to speculate on their presence. Widespread use of Internet technologies like NAT (Network Address Translation) which we all uses somewhere, have also led to 'Top Talker' details becoming bulky and meaningless.

We recently conducted a small-scale trial on a customer's internet connection. It was used by a group of eight people over four hours, generated 24,000 separate conversations, and made rapid interpretation impossible. Despite this, we believe widespread availability of Flow technologies from vendors like Cisco, Juniper and HP is creating more useful tools, and Highlight will be supporting collection of Flow traffic in a forthcoming release. If you'd like more information on Flow technologies and how Highlight will be supporting them, please contact us.

highlight update

User admin - Log on, Tune in, Chill out

It's summer (well almost, or did we miss it?). This is a time to be enjoying the long evenings, the great outdoors, BBQs with the family, and generally putting work in perspective and reducing your stress.

Highlight is here to help. Take some time to ensure the right people have access to the system, so that they can see how good performance is, initiate fixes to any problems, and not bug you with unnecessary queries!

Highlight user accounts are unlimited and free, so request them for your team, or request Admin access so that you can add and manage user access for the team yourself.

Why not drop a line to your Support team, with the names and individual email addresses of new users, or click the 'Add New User' button when you're logged on.

Or perhaps send a Meeting Point Invitation, illustrating a situation of interest, and allow the system to prompt you about users not already on the system:

Watch our Quick Set-up demo to see how easy administration is and discover how to set-up a News Insight Observer. If there's a problem you care about, it can send you an email so you'll know when you arrive at work… …or when your phone bleeps in your pocket while you should be browning the burgers or looking after the kids! Its one thing less to check, and you can work on that 'Crackberry addiction' another time!

welcome

...to your June 2008 issue of The Monthly Highlight. This regular newsletter is created exclusively for NetEvidence customers, partners and users of our core product, Highlight.

This month, NetFlow is the subject of Technology Spotlight, the little-known link between admin access and a good barbecue is explored in Highlight Update, and Feature Focus expands on our trouble-free trial service. You can also catch up on some of the more interesting news stories for network professionals from the past month in Networking News, and discover a site for sore ears in NotWorking.

Please get in touch with any comments you have on this newsletter or contact me to share your own ideas for The Monthly Highlight. Enjoy the issue.

All the very best regards,

- Jeremy

Jeremy Edwards, NetEvidence services director
jedwards@net-evidence.com

network news

Europe backs net neutrality

The net neutrality debate appeared to make some genuine progress this month with evidence that the European Commission could be ready to support the principle.

Speaking at an Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) ministerial meeting in South Korea, telecommunications commissioner Viviane Reding said: "The discussion on network neutrality is not a technical question to be answered by regulatory authorities but firstly a political question to be answered by the people: the internet is theirs." ZDNetUK reported Reding telling a global online forum that because of "explosive developments" such as the dramatic proliferation of online video, "some are starting to question the founding principles of openness and neutrality that have been essential for the development and tremendous innovation power of the internet".

Net neutrality is a concept that allows all online content to be treated equally by access providers, hosts and infrastructure owners, just as it has been since the web's earliest days. The current debate revolves around the matter of ISPs charging content providers for traffic, and has been exacerbated in the UK this year by a disagreement between the BBC and providers demanding the broadcaster should help pay for the infrastructure supporting its iPlayer media content.

Next-gen broadband is a slow burner

The UK government's advisory group on broadband and digital convergence, the Broadband Stakeholder Group, believes next generation broadband will deliver long term cost benefits, but will take longer than expected and an estimated Ł16 billion to roll out, according to Computerworld UK.

The BSG report 'A Framework for Evaluating the Value of Next Generation Broadband' advises operators to delay deployment in the short term while they study the associated costs and expected return, but asserts that the government and regulators should work with operators to aid investment in the rollout to ensure the UK doesn't lose out.

Peer-to-peer the way forward?

Verisign, one of the most respected names in the internet security business, has told the Times Online that the peer-to-peer technology that powers many illegal file-sharing sites could now represent the best way for internet infrastructure providers to cope with increased traffic volumes.

Despite peer-to-peer being blamed for the imminent downfall of the online entertainment industry just a few years ago, Verisign now believes the technology could prove instrumental in maintaining the smooth operation of the internet with the inevitable continued growth of popular rich media services such as YouTube.

"There may be a bad stigma attached to peer-to-peer but it may be necessary in order to distribute the traffic," said Ken Silva, chief technology officer at VeriSign. "You're going to get to a point where streaming video to a billion homes from a single point is just not going to be possible."

feature focus

Trials without tribulations

Running Highlight in Software-as-a-Service mode (SaaS) makes it really easy to set-up and provide visibility across your network. Recently we've been running free one month trials for eligible customers and seeing some very interesting results.

If you receive Highlight via a NetEvidence Partner or directly from NetEvidence, you may not be aware that you can extend your Highlight visibility to include multi-provider links, or onto other network types that the partner does not provide, including LAN segments and switches, and view these in a trial for a one month period, subject to eligibility.

The process is simple. There's a brief set of instructions on how to configure target routers and switches. Watch the Quick Set-up demo and then enter the details into Highlight's online provisioning screens.

This month's trialists included a specialist construction company, a stockbroker and an event management company. Each had multi-location, multi-network type performance requirements and had over 50 locations up and showing performance within two days.

The combination of Application Insight, Multi-Performance Insight across Leased Lines, DSL and MPLS nodes, presented some interesting results: One company baselined its network which comprised 34% http, 18% Exchange and 22% Citrix traffic, into the correct Classes of Service (CoS). Another identified and removed an outbreak of unauthorised, peer-to-peer eDonkey traffic which was consuming 49% of bandwidth every weekend and impacting the business week.

Two organisations logged into Highlight over 60 times during the one month trial, and can continue to add users and manage the estate into the future.

Please contact us for more details.

notworking

TuneGlue

Working all day with intuitive visual data and clear graphical windows onto the world around you can become addictive. Once you get used to the simplicity of at-a-glance information in your working life, it's only natural to seek similarly impressive presentation values in your own time.

TuneGlue uses a comprehensive database, intelligent visuals and straightforward animation to allow you to discover new music from old. Tap in the name of a musical artist you enjoy and Tune Glue will create a web of connected acts around your initial choice. Expand all or some of these new selections. Click again down the linked framework. The graphic stretches and expands to accommodate the branches you create. When you're ready you can click any act to find out what releases they have available and even order discs. Or you can just keep expanding your web of music to see how far removed you can get from your original search.

highlight archive

You can access previous issues of highlight by following this link.

how do I get highlight?

NetEvidence provides Highlight in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model through partnerships with service and solutions providers (http://www.net-evidence.com/Partners/partnersTab.asp), who provide performance visibility to their customers.

If you're interested in more information about Highlight, or need your login details resetting, please email support@net-evidence.com and we will liaise to action your request.

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