Three Shortcuts for UC Success

Managing UC means delivering streaming video fluidly, transmitting voice with clarity, moving IM’s briskly, and sending emails promptly. Use these three tips to achieve the high performance end-users expect.

  • See the Entire Network and UC Environment

UC is a diverse mix of services running in a shared network environment where apps and communications interact together. It requires a monitoring solution set that provides total visibility and analysis of UC services and the overall IT environment. For example, when the audio drops out during a Board of Directors video conference, comprehensive views of your IT landscape with granular insights are essential for quick troubleshooting and resolution.

  • Set QoS Precedence Right From the Start

Poor performance ultimately impacts user productivity and can drain network team resources. Save yourself a few hundred headaches by correctly setting QoS precedence and allocating bandwidth where it’s most needed. To optimize performance, make all UC priorities clear – starting with decisions made during pre-deployment. When assigning priority numbers, consider the needs and priorities of all services in your environment.

Sensitive apps like VoIP and video deserve the number one slot, and establishing QoS precedents across all call components is essential. Also, be sure other apps integral to the enterprise like Salesforce.com® have a high QoS setting, while ranking unessential services like Pandora® last on your list.

  • Stay Ahead of Bandwidth Consumption

UC applications are more complex and demanding than traditional apps. In a landscape of multiple services from diverse vendors, unexpected spikes in bandwidth usage can throw off everything. The best approach to managing bandwidth is a preventive one.

  1. Look before you leap. Pre-deployment network assessment gives you an understanding of current bandwidth load with existing network and application demands for accurate assessment of resources before adding more apps into the mix.
  2. Allocate significant bandwidth. Since voice and video are bandwidth-hungry, plan for heavy consumption by allocating a specific portion of your network pipe to satisfy these (usually) predictable UC demands.
  3. Use baselines to establish UC application behavior norms. Once a baseline is created, set prioritized alarms for instant alerts when an app starts veering off-course, providing you time to resolve problems before end-users are impacted.

For additional insight into monitoring VoIP and videoconferencing performance and quality

7 Ways a Performance Management System Improve Your Business

We all have to manage our network, but why do you need a performance management system. If I were to ask, I think most network managers would answer

  • I need the ability to prove that the network is not at fault.
  • I need increased visibility into our infrastructure/devices
  • Reporting how can I get the data I need to support my objectives and troubleshoot

Below are 7 areas a performance management system can help change your information technology systems from a cost center to profit center by decreasing cost or increasing revenue.

Network Downtime

Since all the applications use the network as the highway any system downtime can be very costly. This can hurt your bottom line as well as your company image resulting in decreased customer loyalty and increased employee frustration.

Gartner has reported that on average, corporations report the network goes down about 87 hours per year and depending on your type of business system, downtime can cost between $42,000 to $6 Million per hour.

If you use an average of $100,000 per hour this works out to and 8.7 million dollar in lost revenue.

Get to know your numbers! How often do you have an outage, and what does this cost your company?

Reduce Customer Loss

As customers  use online portals to do business with your company you need to ensure that you maintain a high customer satisfaction level of your online experience. We all know it takes 6 to 7 times more effort to acquire a new customer than it does to keep the ones you have, so ensuring that you are available and meeting your customer expectations will keep them coming back

Scheduled Maintenance

So when is it the best time to schedule maintenance or upgrades to the network? Who will be impacted by this upgrade? If you are a global organization or even just across the county, you need to know when your maintenance will have the least impact on internal and external clients. Your management system should allow you to determine when the least number of users will be impacted by network maintenance or upgrades.

Deploying New Projects

You have new applications to be introduced if users encounter problems when they go live, their first impression of the new service is negative. By running network performance tests either using IP SLA or with IP generation tools you can determine how the network and service will perform before going live. Once live you can then compare your actual traffic to the synthetic data to ensure everything is running as it should.

Device Utilization

Which IT assets are over subscribed today and which ones can be re-deployed or better utilized? You have to develop a picture of how the network is evolving so you can be pro-active and see what areas need to expand, and what areas are undersubscribed.

The Impact Virtualization

Server virtualization comes with benefits like cost reductions and operational efficiencies but it can also change how you deploy and manage the network and service delivery. You need to understand what servers are good candidates for virtualization.and how to get visibility into this service. 

Operational Cost

In todays world your network management system needs to grow with you. With mergers and acquisitions taking place you could end up with new infrastructure elements that your management system needs to be able to report on very quickly. Waiting 6 months to become visually aware of new infrastructure components is not acceptable and holding you back

Many legacy management systems have performed for many years and although they may still function correctly, they have likely become a series of additional modules making them harder to implement and administer. This can increase your operational costs as these mature systems may not be able to deploy and maintain as a newer system.

Your network managment system needs to be easy to install and configue and give you the operational flexibility to use the built in functionality of network devicea and scalale as your network grows.

Time Synchronization for Secure Networks Using Fiber

Government and military networks often utilize the concept of unclassified networks vs classified networks to manage levels of information security. Since a complete “air-gap” around a highly sensitive network is not practical, every data connection is evaluated as a security risk.

When it comes to accurate synchronization traceable to time standards on a classified network, we lose the ability to deploy a GPS receiver due to restrictions on wireless connections. The best choice for a “wired” connection is fiber optics since they do not emit nor receive electromagnetic energy. In its SecureSync synchronization platform, Orolia has deployed fiber optics for the transfer of any digital synchronization signal that can be utilized for synchronization of isolated networks.

A pair of SecureSyncs are deployed on opposites sides of a security boundary. The unit on the unclassified network is deployed with a GPS receiver and transmits highly accurate timing data to the unit on the classified network via IRIG time code. Then this “IRIG slave” operates as the master clock for all time-sensitive devices on the classified network. In this scheme, a single master can serve many isolated networks via multiple IRIG ports.

The IRIG connection is one-way. IRIG time code is not a communication protocol therefore, there are no requests nor hand-shaking. A time and date message is streamed point-to-point. The transmitter of IRIG data cannot receive any information and the receiver cannot transmit any information to comply with the practices of network isolation.

At the time of this writing, Orolia utilizes Avago Technologies’ fiber optic ports (transmitter P/N = HFBR-1414TZ; receiver P/N = HFBR-2416TZ). However, if further qualification is required contact us to verify the current configuration.



Accurate Time with Network Isolation

  • Compatible with SIPRNET and NIPRNET
  • No wireless connection (GPS receiver)
  • One-way communication via IRIG timing protocol does not allow unauthorized access
  • Fiber optic connections protect against unauthorized access

SecureSync as a Flexible Time and Frequency Reference

  • GPS master deployed on unclassified network
  • IRIG slave deployed on classified network
  • IRIG signaling via 820 nm multi-mode ST fiber connectors)
  • IRIG DCLS option with 4 outputs (model 1204-1E) on master
  • IRIG DCLS option with 1 input and 2 outputs (model 1204-27) on slave

Security is Broken – Let’s fix it

This statement might be bold but it is accurate. While the current security solutions are more sophisticated than ever and the regulators all over the world mandate advanced protection and procedures to be used, secruity breaches continue to happen .

Reading through any report – from government agencies, public security companies and private analysts, it is clear that the overall state of security is not enough. This unique situation is caused due to several factors. Each of those factors is powerful by itself. Their combination is catastrophic:

The positive mass adaptation of the connected world is creating an opportunity for attackers to penetrate deep and far into organizations networks including the most sophisticated and highly protected systems

    • The “Internet of things” creates a connected world where everyday objects like watches, smart TV, medical equipment, smart meters and industrial equipment become a launch pad to allow an attack to penetrate a network.
    • Consumerization of the organized IT equipment so standard interfaces and protocols are being used to connect classifieds systems. Even more, consumer equipment and components are being used everywhere.
    • Knowledge and information sharing allows small number of highly qualified individuals to share their avail knowledge and code. The knowledge of the few is shared very quickly via email, blogs and social media. Typically protected by hard-to-decipher encryption.
    • Relative success of “traditional” guerrilla attacks in various parts of the world has proved that asymmetric conflicts pay off. Attackers have the motivation, knowledge and ability to penetrate everywhere.

Size is a problem

Just like border protection, it is more difficult to protect a large network than a smaller place. With a national level network, providing bullet-proof security is impossible. Using the travel industry as an example, it is clear that providing hermetic security at the borders is impossible. The number of TSA agents, magnometers, x ray scans and other measures used did not increase the overall level of security. Still there are enough reports and evidence that such protection can be evaded.

Cost is prohibiting

The high level of complexity and number of protected nodes creating a budgetary challenge for every organization: private or government. There’s never enough budget to provide protection, especially as organizations need to improve and reduce cost in order to provide better services to their customers.

Technology is changing faster

The fast speed of changes in technology gives the attacker an advantage. A single attacker is capable of innovating faster than the protecting organizations. Sometimes this is due to the policies and procedures of such organization – it simply takes a lot of time to move on with a security project, even when the need was identified, budget was allocated and POC was completed. Another thing to remember is that a newly purchased security solution was developed for several months with technology that was also developed for some time, so overall even the newest solution in your arsenal, is using a technology that is older than your attacker’s.

The bottleneck of improved security measures

Using  airport security as an example it is clear to understand why increased security threats and measures are influencing productivity. The more security procedures are being enforced by TSA, the lines at the checkpoint are longer. It is possible to add more agents, but then the number of x-ray machines should be increased as well. As a result, any improvements requires increased capital investment that is only temporary.

When it comes to national-level infrastructure protection, it is clear that any deployed measure would be insufficient. In order to fix the security problems, any solution should meet the following requirements:

    1. Meet current and future security challenges
    2. Meet current and future performance needs
    3. Meet the network size challenges: support Availability: Ability to respond fast, accurately with needed power and Agility: Reinforce defense when needed
    4. Act fast during attacks and Advance as needed promote security tools across the network as needed

It is clear that there’s not a single solution that can address all those needs. However the solution can come from a different place: the network. Modern methods to combine, cascade and join multiple solutions to work in concert exist. Such solutions include network packet brokers that are used to integrate multiple solutions together seamlessly to create a very effective security solution that is made from multiple products, each addressing some risk factors and attack vectors, yet their combination together is creating a very effective solution.