Responding to IT Network Issues

If simple remedial scripts are not enough to fix an IT network issue, a more comprehensive response may be in order.

When a network suffers a slowdown or outage, most network monitoring solutions help IT teams respond by providing data on the location of the problem, and then automatically sending email/SMS notifications to key stakeholders, generating a ticket in the system, and executing custom remedial scripts. But that is as far as they go.

It is left to the developers to understand the problem – be it latency, packet loss, jitter or something else - find the source of the error and then work out an appropriate solution. How quickly the problem is resolved depends heavily on the precision and speed of the network monitoring solution in locating the problem and the expertise of the team in finding a fix that works.

In addition to being cost-effective, the ideal network monitoring technology is efficient, purpose-built and provides highly relevant features in an easy-to-use format so that teams can swiftly identify problems. Cutting-edge products such as the Allegro Network Multimeter fit this bill, offering plug & play functionality – meaning they can be installed and deployed rapidly – and a powerful, easy-to-use suite of functions that provide comprehensive and direct analysis of all network issues.

With the network monitoring solution illuminating the source of the problem, the critical job of rectifying it begins. And here too the latest technology can give teams a helping hand. WAN Network emulators are key to brainstorming, identifying and testing potential fixes - and represent the only way to ensure predictable performance of the system before deployment of the fix.

The Calnex SNE is the only network emulator on the market that offers realistic network simulation, capable of delivering fully reliable solutions to any network performance issue. As a network in a box, the cost-effective Calnex SNE simulates the real-world conditions under which existing applications perform, allowing network teams to experiment in a safe, controlled and repeatable lab setting, and continuously develop and test various novel solutions to their network issues until they find the optimal one. Given the perfect simulation of their real-world network provided by the Calnex SNE, network teams can be confident when applying the resulting fix that it will work.

As the world becomes increasingly more reliant on connectivity, solutions like the Allegro Network Multimeter and Calnex SNE - both of which helping to reduce network downtime and fix failures - will become more important than ever in minimizing revenue and productivity losses, and ensuring business as usual.

Anand Ram
VP Marketing