A Centralized Approach to End-To-End Network Monitoring

Network World

July 15, 2009

As Fortune 500 production networks grow in size and scope, so does the demand for achieving total network visibility. One hundred percent visibility is essential to realizing the rigorous five-nines uptime standard, and failing to monitor all points on the network can lead to costly outages or increase the time to resolution -- resulting in revenue losses as well as customer dissatisfaction.

In response, enterprises are investing in farms of monitoring and analysis tools such as analyzers, sniffers, archiving systems and intrusion-detection systems (IDS). To most enterprises, these tools are not an option, but a requirement to maintain a healthy network and meet security and compliance regulations. However, ranging in cost from $25,000 to more than $150,000 each, they also represent a significant capital investment.

While it is cost prohibitive to put these devices at every network monitoring point, it is equally unwise to have them sit idle until needed. The ideal solution is to deploy devices in a way that allows them to be shared to maximize coverage and utilization. With the adoption of matrix switching technology, efficient device sharing is becoming more common. However, effectively managing this infrastructure from a single, centralized point has remained a challenge.

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