Significant changes in the structure and use of IT, including such seismic trends as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), virtualization and cloud computing, have introduced new challenges to IT administrators and staff. Added layers of complexity require new skill sets and knowledge bases as well as tools to effectively run a modern enterprise network. This raises a few questions about how IT teams are coping with the changes.
Continue reading “Network (In)Visibility Leads to IT Blame Game”
It seems as if the Sochi Winter Olympics and March Madness happened just yesterday, but the month of June is here, and with it, one of the most highly anticipated sporting events of any four year period. It could be argued that the FIFA World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world, and with a soccer powerhouse country like Brazil hosting the tournament this year – across 12 venues – sports fans are getting the eye drops ready so they can watch every moment of the action between June 12 and July 13. ESPN will present all 64 matches across three networks (ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC).
Continue reading “The World Cup is Upon Us – But Are We Prepared?”
While at Cisco Live today, I was struck by the traffic patterns on the show floor. Wherever there was a traffic jam, it seemed as though it was caused by a few people walking slower than everyone else, or by a momentary obstruction that halted traffic. Enterprise networks share many of the same attributes (and problems) that show floors do in that respect. The part that makes it worse for enterprise networks (vs. show floors) is that there are mission-critical applications that run on top of these networks. When networks have performance issues (even momentary ones), the impact on these applications can be catastrophic.
Continue reading “Dynatrace-Endace Partnership Enhances AA-NPM with EndaceProbe”
Last month, we talked about how to keep the Winter Olympics from clogging up your networks as employees raced to stream live events during the workday. Well, in the U.S., today and tomorrow are two of the biggest sports streaming days of the year. Although we’ve already seen some play-in games this week, when Ohio State and Dayton tip-off this afternoon in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the annual “madness” repeats itself all over again. This is because this next slate of games will run almost continually over the coming 36 hours, mostly during regular business hours. And let’s be honest, most of us want to sneak a peek at the scores and witness some of the thrilling upsets that happen every year.
Continue reading “Make Sure March Madness Doesn’t Live Up to its Name”
The Sochi Winter Olympics are officially underway, and as you may have seen, NBC will once again be providing viewers access to live streaming in a multitude of mediums. On the NBC Olympics page, computer users can enter their cable or digital television provider personal user name and password and watch live video of the events. Mobile viewers can also download the free NBC Live Extra App. The iPhone, Droid and iPad app will have live and recorded events, and on demand HD video. And for the first time, NBC Universal will stream video on Facebook as part of a partnership deal with the social media giant.
Continue reading “How to Keep Sochi From Sucking Up Bandwidth”
Medical procedures today are characterized by precision. Thirty years ago, most cancer surgeries involved general anesthetic, “opening up” the patient, invasive and radical procedures, extended hospital stays for recovery, and in many cases. significant side effects. Today, a surgeon can make a small incision, insert a laser probe, and “zap” the tumor, in many cases under no more than a local anesthetic. The benefits are faster recoveries and little to no side effects.
Today marks the launch of Endace Packets, a protocol analyzer for EndaceProbes, which brings the same level of “laser precision” to the Network Operations (NetOps) and Security Operations (SecOps) process. Many of you are familiar with Wireshark, the open source network analysis tool. Wireshark has been the de facto standard for packet analysis in the Ethernet world for nearly a decade, and is used extensively by both NetOps and SecOps personnel. However, the file sizes of traces produced from 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) networks is a challenge for Wireshark, as anyone who has used Wireshark on such a trace can attest. Like surgeries of old, you need to “open up” the patient to find the particular data of interest, which slows issue resolution
Continue reading “Endace Packets – Laser Surgery for the Data Center!”