Any time you encounter a user complaint, whether regarding slow Internet access, application errors, or other issues that impact productivity, it is important to begin with a thorough understanding of the user’s experience. Not sure where to begin?  User complaints usually fall into three categories: slow network, inability to access network resources, and application-specific issues. Based upon the complaint being presented you need to understand the symptoms and then isolate the issue to ...

Maximizing the Value and Resiliency of Your Deployed Enterprise Security Solution with Intelligent Load Balancing Correctly implementing your security solution in the presence of complex, high-volume user traffic has always been a difficult challenge for network architects. The data in transit on your network originates from many places and fluctuates with respect to data rates, complexity, and the occurrence of malicious events. Internal users create vastly different network traffic than extern...

Defining unified communications is more complicated than it seems, but a thorough understanding of UC technology is required before informed buying decisions can be made. Not only is the UC value proposition difficult to articulate, but it involves multiple decisions that impact both the IT group and end users. In brief, UC is a platform that seamlessly integrates communications applications across multiple modes -- such as voice, data and video -- and delivers a consistent end-user experience a...

Delivers industry’s first visibility solution that includes stateful SSL decryption to improve application performance and security forensics Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading provider of application performance and security resilience solutions, announced it has extended its Application and Threat Intelligence (ATI) Processor™ to include stateful, bi-directional SSL decryption capability for application monitoring and security analytics tools. Stateful SSL decryption provides complete session info...

I was recently reading an article in TechCrunch titled “The Problem With The Internet Of Things,” where the author lamented how bad design or rollout of good ideas can kill promising markets. In his example, he discussed how turning on the lights in a room, through the Internet of Things (IoT), became a five step process rather than the simple one step process we currently use (the light switch). This illustrates the problem between the grand idea, and the practicality of the market: it’s awesom...

When it comes to IT services, business value and user satisfaction are both dependent upon the server, network, and applications all working together seamlessly. Failure to adequately monitor each of these and their interactions, means that you could be flying blind – susceptible to degraded service levels. While application and network monitoring receive a lot of the attention, it is important to also understand what’s going on with the server. Virtualization changes the face of service deliver...

Two recent studies that look at the state of mobile and fixed networks show that while networks are getting ever faster, security is a paramount concern that is taking up more time and resources. Akamai recently released its fourth quarter 2014 State of the Internet report. Among the findings: In terms of network security, high tech and public sector targets saw increased numbers of attacks from 2013 to 2014, while enterprise targets had fewer attacks over the course of the year – except Q4, whe...

The ongoing push to increase server virtualization rates is driven by its many benefits for the data center and business. A reduction in data center footprint and maintenance, along with capital and operating cost reductions are key to many organizations’ operational strategy. The ability to dynamically adjust server workloads and service delivery to achieve optimal user experience is a huge plus for IT teams working in the virtualized data center – unless something goes wrong. With network infr...

Implementing network monitoring for organization is not something new for large enterprise networks; but for small to medium sized businesses a comprehensive monitoring solution is often not inside their limited budgets. Network monitoring involves a system that keeps track of the status of the various elements within a network; this can be something as simple as using ICMP (ping) traffic to verify that a device is responsive. However, the more comprehensive options offer a much deeper perspecti...

Your network infrastructure exists for one reason: to deliver the services and applications that matter to your customers who demand access now, without interruption. Anything that affects your ability to reach customers has a serious impact on your bottom line. High-quality application performance requires real-time awareness of what’s happening on the network. Network operators need to monitor, analyze, and report on transactions throughout the IT environment—whether physical, virtual, or in t...

  PLAY BETTER WITH THE OTHER IT TEAMS. SHARE YOUR PACKETS Raise your IT profile by promoting the packet. Find other teams that might benefit from packet intelligence too. That application developer in the break room might be interested to know the network impact and chattiness of an internal app they’re coding. Performance monitoring solutions like the Observer Platform can provide access to packets and simplify the sharing of analysis with easy-to-read graphical reports and dashboards.&nbs...

For most every enterprise, the network is your business. Your network and applications are what connects you to your customers. Maintaining network vitality for an optimal user experience is key to business growth and profitability. But today’s networks are under tremendous pressures. User expectations for high performance and innovative applications are ever-increasing. So too are the frequency, magnitude, and sophistication of security attacks that your adversaries are launching to attempt to ...

Visibility Into the Business With virtualization, "Big Data," and the sheer complexity of enterprise networks on the rise, dynamic network monitoring of performance and security provides a critical business advantage. Ixia's network visibility solutions deliver ongoing insight into production networks to help maximize your company's productivity and profitability, as well as its return on new and existing IT investments. Leveraging state-of-the-art technology and techniques, Ixia's powerful, hig...

Most security experts agree that the rapidly changing nature of malware, hack attacks and government espionage practically guarantees your IT infrastructure will be compromised. According to the 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the average detection, escalation and notification costs for a breach is approximately $1 million. Post-incident costs averaged $1.6 million. Once an attacker is within the network, it can be very difficult to identify and elimi...

Security breaches are common today – from computer viruses, such as Bash Bug or Heartbleed, undermining the security of millions of websites, to credit card cyber theft experienced by big retailers. One effort to protect cardholder information is Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS), which was created in October 2008 to protect personal cardholder information whenever used in a financial transaction. PCI DSS, which is applied wherever cardholder data is stored, processed or t...

Robust Monitoring to Meet Big Data Challenges Unstructured data accounts for as much as 80 percent of most companies' total data volume. This “Big Data” has customarily taken too long and cost too much to process and analyze. Now, however, emerging Big Data initiatives stand to transform these vast, untapped resources from a costly storage challenge into vital business intelligence for marketing, product development, stock trading, genetic research, and more. Big Data promises quantum gains in p...

Much of the discussion around the Observer Platform 17 release has focused on how the designs of the new user interface (UI) and other enhancements will assist network and operations teams to more easily manage service and application performance. This performance data and analysis isn’t just of value to IT but to the overall business. The challenge for performance management solutions has been providing this intelligence in a way that can be easily accessed and understood by other IT and busine...

Network Instruments has announced the newest edition of the Observer Performance Management Platform. With redesigned, easy-to-use interfaces and workflows, expanded web user visibility, increased transactional intelligence, and enhanced integration with third-party tools and applications, Observer Platform 17 offers the network team a comprehensive, intuitive approach. What’s New Several components of the Observer Platform have changed significantly with this release. Observer Reporting Server ...

The following blog post is by Steve Brown, the director of product marketing for Network Instruments, a business unit of JDSU. The management of IT resources has changed significantly over the past several years. With the implementation of cloud, unified communications (UC), and Big Data initiatives, locating the source of application or service delivery issues has become increasingly complex. As a result, the network team often functions as a first responder, ensuring the continued and uninterr...

Network Instruments, a business unit of JDSU (NASDAQ: JDSU), has announced the latest edition of its cornerstone Observer® Performance Management Platform. Observer Platform 17 provides network managers and engineers a comprehensive, intuitive approach to: Proactively pinpoint performance problems and optimize services. Integrate monitoring into the deployment of IT initiatives, including cloud, service orchestration and security. Easily manage access and share performance data with IT teams and...