#network application visibility

By David Mackey

We at VistaOne like to educate customers on available solutions to ensure through collaboration, we employ the best solution for the problem and the environment. VistaOne engineer Jim Dixon recently described the way several traffic shapers prioritize network data.

Blue Coat PacketShaper

PacketShaper allows the management of aggregate class traffic through the use of "partitions" or virtual pipes. Traffic in a partition can have both a guaranteed minimum and a capped maximum. Individual flows or connections can also be controlled with the use of policies. It's also possible to shape or control on a per host basis with the use of "Dynamic Sub-Partitions". PacketShaper's shaping mechanism is TCP Rate Control and works by manipulating TCP rather than directly dropping packets.

Exinda Exinda also allows for the management of aggregate traffic via guaranteed minimums and capped maximums. With Exinda, this can be done either with a virtual circuit, which is similar to the PacketShaper partition, or on separate classifications of traffic called policies within a virtual circuit. Exinda also does per host shaping they call Dynamic Virtual Circuits.

In addition, it's possible do shaping or control based on total accumulated bandwidth per host. For example, I could set a bandwidth limit of a gig a day per host and drop the connection rate for hosts who exceed that daily limit. Both policies and virtual circuits can be scheduled and thus different policy can be in effect during business and after hours. Exinda uses its own implementation of Hierarchical Token Bucket Queuing for control.

Procera PacketLogic Procera has a unique approach of allowing an individual connection to be classified more than once. This allows for per host, or even per connection policy to be in effect at the same time a global policy is in effect on the same type of traffic. So it's possible to limit each P2P connection to 1k and also limit all P2P to 1M, etc. With Procera, traffic can be classified by application attribute (for example, HTTP URL or server host name) and even behavior (streaming, download, random looking/encrypted).

Procera can classify connections based on their client or server roles. It's possible to limit (or block) local hosts when they are acting as servers but allow client connections on those same hosts for the same application.

By David Mackey

By David Mackey

With 70% year-over-year growth, Exinda has been making serious inroads into network application delivery enhancement with their Unified Performance Management version of WAN optimization. UPM displays every application that is traversing the network, identifies individual users, pinpoints the origin of traffic and communicates the amount of bandwidth consumed. Then it provides tools for practical prioritization, secure control and acceleration.

The just-introduced operating system version, ExOS 6.1, elevates the platform further introducing the Exinda Edge Cache™ and four other feature enhancements and functions. In addition, the company launched Network Reporting Center, an advanced solution for real-time troubleshooting and historical reporting of all applications on an organization's WAN and Internet connections.

Together, they provide six new reasons to put Exinda on the short list of any organization looking to initiate WAN optimization or replace an outdated shaping device:

1. Edge Cache The Exinda Edge Cache enables single-sided caching of Internet-based content, including web objects, videos and software updates with a single Exinda appliance at the branch office or data center, dramatically reducing bandwidth usage and costs. Web objects are cached at the network edge as they are downloaded from the Internet. These objects can then be delivered to the users on the corporate local area network much faster.

2. Scalability Enhancements for Optimization Under the new OS, administrators can expect to double the number of connections supported for acceleration by any Exinda appliance. Organizations can add more users without hardware upgrades.

3. IPv6 Support Exinda now supports native IPv6 connectivity, visibility and control. Administrators can netflow export IPv6 traffic information such as layer 7 application ID and application performance metrics—jitter, loss and latency—for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.

4. Enhanced Network Health Alerting Administrators can institute alerts based on individual metrics such as:

packet retransmissions and losses

TCP connections started, refused, aborted or ignored by the server

network server and transaction delays for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic

5. Updated L7 Application Signatures With every release Exinda continues to add and improve its L7 inspection engine. With ExOS 6.1, Exinda has added over a dozen new signatures and updated more than 50 existing signatures.

6. Network Reporting Center The advanced Network Reporting Center delivers comprehensive network diagramming and long-term historical trending and analytics to enable network managers to get a complete view of their entire worldwide network.

NRC goes beyond port and protocol reporting to show the actual applications and users consuming network resources. Network managers have the tools to monitor overall network performance, analyze historical data to anticipate problems, identify key trends in performance and address them before they impact the user experience.

Once installed on the WAN, NRC collects network data from the Exinda appliance in each location, including head office and branches, and consolidates the data into a single, centralized reporting dashboard. NRC provides granular, by-the-minute reporting in real time, as well as up to two years of historical data on the applications traversing the network. The NRC is offered as a cloud solution or as an on-site virtual appliance.

By Steve Inman

We see the term "Proof of Concept" used regularly now, and very rarely hear "Evaluation" when prospective Customers test a product live in their own environment. While both terms imply no prior commitment to buy, we believe there is a significant difference summed up by the length of time the Customer test lasts, vendor engineering investment, and by payment of some fee to the vendor for the test. 

In our vernacular, an evaluation is a short term (less than 30 day) trial to test the effectiveness of a product in solving a short list of items that would justify purchasing the product. Like a test drive of a car "Evals" are usually free to the prospective Customer and involve a small enough engineering investment by the vendor to be reasonably be recovered by the profit margin from a successful conversion to a sale. 

By Steve Inman

I recently overheard a conversation in which someone who had just been introduced to our company (and who did not have any experience in IT) asked what it is we did.  She received a high-level description of some of our solutions and a description of what we see as the “pillars” of Application Performance Management—Visibility, Prioritization, Acceleration, and Security.

By Steve Evans

Netcore is to my WAN what Packeteer was the first time I used it.  It's eye-opening.  You get that "wow, I didn't realize this was going on in our network" realization and the data is there real-time.  Having the ability to troubleshoot retro-actively is also key.  I often get calls from application managers asking about slowness in their apps on Monday morning (it's now Tuesday afternoon).  With Netcore I'm now able to drill back and see, in great detail, what was going on.