Todays network is more complex than ever. AS more deVIces, applications, locations and users generate unprecedented levels of network activity, new pertormance issues emerge, and its more ditficult to solve them quickly.
Uitimately, the challenge tor network managers is to deliver a predictable experience tor your most critical applications and most important users. However, network congestion and poor application pertormance stand in the way of this. And when these issues come up, the efects can be devastating resulting in lost productivity and revenue tor your Business.
In order to provide a reliable, productive work environment in 2014, network managers need to proactively monitor the health of their network in real time, to identify network issues as they happen and remediate them quickly to get their back on task.
IT managers and administrators should read this guide to learn about the most common problems impacting network pertormance in 2014 and get four tips to troubleshoot them,
The 3 Most Common Network Problems
Balancing the performance of more applications and devices over the same network infrastructure and meeting users' expectations for a quality experience has never been more difficult. Below are the three most common network problems our customers tell us they experience:
1. POOR APPLICATION PERFORMANCE
Applications -anb by extension-your Business, simply can't function without a reliable nework infrastructure, protocols such as CIFS and MAPI were not designed to perform across low-latency WANS, which makes it difficult to ensure they perform to relliably. To ensure the flow of business is uninterupted, network managers must improve response times tor these business-critical apps by accelerating application performance.
2. TOO MANY USERS WITH TOO MANY DEVICES
At most companies, employees, customers and partners alike need anywnere, anytime access to their apps and resources On tne corporate network. And more often, employees are accessing these via multiple devices
Simultaneously, consuming more of your network resources. IT managers need more insight into whats on the network so they can set policies to control access at a user or application level.
3. RECREATIONAL TRAFFIC SPIKES
YouTube, Facebook, and other sosial media media applications can be used for strategic bussines one minute and to waste time the next. Knowing exactly when this usage turn form strategic to recreational is vital to maintain the health of your network. Social media, streaming video, and other forms of real time entertainment can bog down the network, making it difficuit for staff to even do simple tasks like open documents and send email. Minimizing the impact of recreational traffic is essential to keeping users happy and productive.
4. Steps to Successfully Troubleshoot Network Problems
Network managers need a plan for proactive network management, to prevent common network issues from negatively impacting the user experience. Here are four best practices we've collected from interviews with our 3,500 customers that you can use to make troubleshooting problems on your network easier.
1. IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM APPLICATIONS
Once you have your Exinda installed, it's easy to identify the applications or users that are draining your network resources. Simply generate the purpose-built reports that display the top talkers on your network, the applications they use, and their total bandwidth utilization.
2. SET BANDWIDTH LIMITS FOR PROBLEM APPLICATIONS
After you've identified the problem users or applications, you can set inteligent policies that limit the amount of bandwidth they can use. For example, if YouTube is negatively impacting network performance, you can create a policy that allows the Marketing department to use YouTube during the day, but only allow access to the rest of the company in the evening. With the right policies in place, you can ensure your users can still make the most of their social apps without it compromising the needs of your business.
3. PROACTIVELY MANAGE THE NETWORK
Ensure your most business-critical applications always have the network resources they need. Make a list of your top ten business-critical apps and top five cannibalizing apps. Use policy-based shaping to prioritize your top ten and limit your bottom five. Building and managing network policies let you provide a more predictable experience to your users.
4. MEASURE SUCCESS
The best way to understand your users' experience is to see what they see. Use Application Performance Scores to monitor the performance of your business-critical applications in real time. When you have the tools to monitor network performance by user, application, device and location, you can easily compare against best practice benchmarks, identify key trends, and address performance issues before your users call the support desk.
Quantifying the User Experience Challenge
The traditional approach to troubleshooting network problems has been to increase network capacity and focus on optimizating application trattic etficiency. But to fluidly adapt to a changing mix of applications, exploding traffic loads and demanding users, network managers need to shed the old-school approach. You need to shift your tocus to ensuring a rellable user experience. TRAC Research underscores this point by stating "IT organizations are five times more likely to cite user experience as the primary network driver than throughput,"
Forrester Research describes the "user experience network (uXn) as it advises lT managers to focus their network strategy on user experience, not application delivery uXn. According to forresster is "a network architecture that focuses on monitoring, controlling, and optimizing the quality of the user experience".
We know that user experience in 2014 is the driving force for network managers. Yet user experience is both more difficult than ever to ensure due to network complexity and more expensive thamln ever to deliver due to bandwidth cost and content expensive. AS network managers, we must proactively monitor and manage the issues that compromise predictable application performance.