An Application Performance Breakthrough – See Across Your Sites, Apps and End Users!
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● March 13, 2012
With highly distributed network and the expansive transition to cloud services, network and application performance monitoring is becoming more and more challenging. With the increase in IP-based applications like VoIP, Video Conferencing, hosted CRMs, VDI and cloud services offering simpler and easier ways to communicate and operate within an organization. Each application comes with unique performance requirements and settings needed to achieve optimal performance and exceptional delivery to end users. Unfortunately, this usually means an application’s poor level of performance goes unnoticed until something fails or breaks. PathView Cloud is the first solution to offer cloud-based application performance monitoring in a real-time, easy-to-understand dashboard of all applications across all locations and users. The dashboard provides IT and non-IT teams alike an immediate and complete view of their application performance from the perspective of remote sites and users.
“For the first time, you can look at one single dashboard and see how all of your applications are performing at all of your remote locations,” said AppNeta CTO Matt Stevens. “This dashboard provides invaluable information to not only the IT team responsible for making the network applications work 24/7, but also the business users they are supporting.”
This first of its kind dashboard highlights SLA compliance, overall application performance as well as specific performance impairments within a selected timeframe. Key performance metrics are compared against pre-identified thresholds needed for optimal application functionality.
The Application Performance Dashboard automatically correlates performance across multiple locations, multiple paths and remote site end users. By mapping real-time, complex network performance metrics into application quality trending, customers can understand how their key business services will perform prior to and after deployment. If any service or location is experiencing sub-standard performance, the Application Performance Dashboard provides the critical details business users need to assure performance and reduce risk of application failure.
If you are interested in learning more about the Application Performance Dashboard, sign up for a free trial or see AppNeta’s cloud-based network performance management solution, PathView Cloud, in a live network monitoring environment! PathView Cloud supplies the technology behind the breakthrough Application Performance Report to achieve the highest class of network and application performance reporting.
Verifying Network Performance SLAs
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● March 8, 2012
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are an interesting concept because unless there is a major disruption it is difficult to guarantee they are being met daily.
How do you know your carrier is meeting the requirements you are paying for? And if you are a carrier, how can you prove to your clients that you are delivering the service as agreed? Network and application performance issues can turn into a finger pointing war between a carrier and a customer. For a resolution to the endless argument, both sides need to be proactively monitor their networks to meet SLAs 24/7 and report accurately and consistently on service delivery.
The rapid growth of cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), coupled with the centralization of IT resources, means that more and more users are “remote” from the applications and data they are accessing. Business-critical network traffic must therefore move over WANs, service provider networks and the Internet.
All businesses and employees need uninterrupted access to these IP-based applications. But when network performance degrades, the performance of today’s network-dependent applications – including VoIP, videoconferencing, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and IP storage – quickly degrades along with it. This makes monitoring and validation of network performance Service Level Agreements (SLAs) increasingly vital to business productivity.
SLAs specify the Quality of Service (QoS) that IT departments and other service providers are mandated to deliver. Business stakeholders point to SLAs as a way to quantify network performance and reliability in business terms. IT departments can benefit from SLAs as a way to illustrate service value, justify funding and compare price/performance against outsourced providers.
But monitoring QoS and isolating SLA violations and other problems over today’s complex, distributed and hyper-busy networks can be extremely difficult.
How do you verify QoS from the perspective of remote users accessing remote resources over networks you don’t own?
How do you deploy and manage the tools required to verify SLAs without introducing yet more network traffic and adding burdensome operational costs?
Many organizations still have no end-to-end visibility into the performance of public networks or those managed by service providers. Common technologies like IP SLA and SNMP cannot reach beyond a company’s own routers and switches.!
When the performance of IP-based applications starts to degrade below agreed levels, many network managers have no tools to accurately pinpoint the source of the problem. Is it with their network, or with a service provider network, or with the SaaS/IaaS provider? The result can be frustrating rounds of finger-pointing and flurries of calls to the Help Desk.
To verify SLAs and efficiently rectify violations and other network performance issues, network managers need three fundamental capabilities:
- End-to-end visibility into key metrics like bandwidth, latency, packet loss and jitter across the network path between services and remote users
- Hop-to-hop diagnostics that clearly pinpoint where problems are occurring, even over third-party or public networks
- Remote performance monitoring tools that automatically send alerts when performance drops below SLA thresholds
These insights let network managers “see beyond their own routers” to ensure an agreed level of QoS to their users, monitor third-party compliance with SLAs, and minimize – or even proactively eliminate — the impact of problems on business activities.
The PathView Cloud network performance management solution provides end-to-end SLA monitoring capabilities that meet today’s demands for comprehensive insight. Delivered as a zero administration, cloud-based service, PathView Cloud measures real-time performance against specified SLAs to any target with an IP address, delivering advanced diagnostics whenever and wherever problems arise.
For more information on how PathView Cloud technology can enable your organization to ensure and verify compliance with network performance SLAs, visit www.appneta.com or try the PathView Cloud service for free on your own network!
An Engineer’s Search: Who Broke the Network?
Posted by: armstrongsean in: ● March 7, 2012
Even companies that provide network performance management services still have to manage their own networks! So, a few weeks ago when I received notification that we were experiencing extremely low available bandwidth out to the internet, I knew I had to act fast to avoid failure of our critical services- The question was: which tool would solve the problem faster and more completely. Around the office, VoIP phone calls were failing and the speed of our web-based CRM we use came to a s-l-o-w crawl.
I wanted to act fast, but also thought it would be interesting to compare the speed and accuracy of PRTG, a very common SNMP tool, to PathView Cloud with FlowView, a breakthrough netflow and traffic analysis service.
1. Investigation with SNMP
Looking at SNMP data from switches, there was extremely high usage coming from a single interface. That one interface was consuming over 90% of our capacity to the Internet.
The problem is this is a physical port on a switch, and there was no easy way to identify the person involved and the activity they were engaged in. Having just moved into this new office, we did not have a complete map of ports to network drops in the office yet, so I had to trace the cables from the switch to the punch-down, then find that port in the office. Like most companies, we have multiple of a single model of switch, and first time around I traced the wrong cable and falsely accused an intern of crashing our network (Sorry Bri). Once I had identified the correct switch and traced it back to a switch port I was able to take the offending system offline, but if I wasn’t physically in the office I would not have been able to trace that to a specific person.
2. Investigation with PathView Cloud with FlowView
One of the key components of PathView is its ability to monitor key aspects of network performance and alert you to issues quickly and easily. We are pretty open with our internet usage policy but there are several common sense thresholds in place to alert us when our key business services are impacted; and others that alert when available bandwidth capacity is less than 20% or total bandwidth.. This is how we were alerted to this issue in the first place.
PathView Cloud includes FlowView, a complete system for analyzing network traffic, generating NetFlow records and reporting on the activity. This is a great system because we don’t have to enable Netflow on any of our network devices and potentially slowing down the devices and all traffic flowing through them. After logging into Flowview, I looked at the same time frame:
I drilled down into the applications and saw that HTTP traffic originating from Akamai was using the vast majority of the bandwidth, and that one person was responsible for 22.5Gb out of the total 23.2Gb traffic to the internet that morning. The hostname of that machine has been kept cryptic to protect the guilty, but I know who it was and what they were doing.
A little further analysis of the traffic answered a few other questions: Who is going to Akamai? Only this person. Akamai is a content distribution network for many very popular websites and internet services, but a little snooping revealed this was iTunes (the only other hosts that connected to that target were iPhones and iPads). Apple doesn’t limit throttle bandwidth usage within iTunes – download as fast as you can, and as it turns out, this coworker has a long commute and was downloading a TV series from iTunes to watch on the train.
In the end, both tools technically could solve this problem. But with PRTG I needed physical access to the hardware and got a less than complete answer about exactly what was going on. I followed the wire, searched for plates on the wall and found that port number. With PathView Cloud, I could see the computer number, the source and the application from a single interface within seconds of logging in.
Want to learn more? See PathView Cloud and FlowView in a live monitoring environment!
The Siri Test: How Much Bandwidth is She Using?
Posted by: bmazzotta in: ● February 29, 2012
In the age of smart phones, data plans and usage caps, many questions come up when looking into your cellphone bill. It seems there are unlimited applications and features are swallowing up data. Have you ever wondered what else is using up your data? Checking mail, sending mail, playing games and using apps use data and affect your plan and your wallet.
Take Apple’s newest iPhone, the 4S. The updated processor, storage and camera upgrades are significant, but the most well known is Apple’s voice recognition capability called Siri. Apple’s Siri is a time saver and life saver in its most basic term. Before Siri, phones searched manually. With the Siri enhancement, users can search the web, make calls, get directions, text and more using only their voice. After the excitement of this feature wears off, the main question that comes up is: how will this affect my data usage?
So, I ran some very basic commands using my iPhone 4S and Siri to find out how much data Siri consumes:
What is the weather going to be like tomorrow?
Play music
Text Fred “Call me after work”
Dial 781-555-5555
Remind me to call Bob tomorrow
I then analyzed all this information with AppNeta’s PathView Cloud using the packet capture capability called FlowView Plus. Here is a breakdown of the tests and Siri’s data usage based on my requests. Siri’s data usage fluctuates depending on the question asked. There are many different things you can ask Siri, from “Will it snow today?” to “How do I get to Proctor’s Theater?” To keep with some sort of standard, I ran each of the captures only for 10 seconds and filtered just the info with my phone as the source or destination.
As you can see from the table, all of the requests differ in complexity. The more complex the question, the higher the data usage. A simple question such as “what is the weather going to be like tomorrow?” creates 29.4 kB of usage whereas a request such as “Dial 781-555-5555” would create more traffic (38 kB) due to the breakdown of the numbers. Specific questions often create a back and forth with Siri where the user asks one question, and Siri asks one back, waiting for another response. Instances like this will obviously take up more data than a typical call request.
These requests create a good number of packets, as every function is broken down into packets. The report below displays packets on a per protocol basis, showing exactly which types of packets are used. A portion of the packets are traveling over SSL adding a layer of security to the data required.
Siri is a time saver since the feature can eliminate typing, as well as a life saver due to the fact that texting is become a punishable offense and using Siri in that way allows you to text and drive without breaking the law or driving to endanger. However, when data usage is concerned, you must remember that, though Siri is a great capability offered with the new iPhone 4s, it is going to be generating more traffic than running your own queries.
Network Performance Monitoring Critical to EHR Success
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● February 23, 2012
Healthcare practices today run on networked applications that connect remote users (hospitals, physicians, clinics) to centralized or hosted resources. Electronic Health Records (EHR), web-based clinical health programs, inter-site communication and online medical registries are all critically dependent on network and application performance. Any drop in bandwidth or increase in latency can make these applications unusable or inaccessible, potentially compromising patient care.
Network and application performance management is particularly critical to healthcare organizations today since applications are bandwidth sensitive. As all sectors of the industry are transitioning to EHRs, the burden of new network-dependent applications can be catastrophic. Without truly understanding network health and available capacity, important applications and services stall or fail completely.
AppNeta is helping hospitals and healthcare organizations around the country to assure the performance of their network and business-critical applications such as hosted EHR. Healthcare IT Industry consultant and analyst Mark Anderson recently wrote a new case study highlighting AppNeta’s work with Beth Israel. After implementing EHR systems at remote clinics, the BI network team was receiving complaints about slow networks and poor application performance from physicians and remote site users. Without visibility into the third party hosted EHR carrier networks or remote sites, they were stuck. The hospital found traditional performance management tools complicated, expensive, time consuming and detailed nothing about the network outside the hospital’s four walls. Anderson’s case study concluded that healthcare organizations that have implemented PathView Cloud experienced the following:
- 74% reduction in network issues.
- 57% reduction in network speed issues.
- 68% reduction in the amount of time it took to resolve a network issue.
Last week, Healthcare IT News also featured PathView Cloud’s role in EHR implementation, focusing on the PathView Cloud service’s ability to provide unlimited visibility into all networks, including third party un-managed networks. EHRs, VoIP, video and VDI are monitored and tested from the remote user’s perspective to ensure delivery 24/7 across the healthcare network infrastructure.
Contact AppNeta to learn more about how network performance monitoring can help you to assure a successful EHR, VoIP or Virtualization deployment! Or, start an easy, free PathView Cloud Trial today.
Managing Branch Office Network Performance in the Cloud Era
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● February 22, 2012
An increase in cloud services means more branch office-based users than ever. According to studies by Gartner and others, 85% – 90% of the average company’s employees now work away from the main corporate office. Those remote workers still need the same high-quality experience of application access and performance as employees at headquarters– especially because many of them have customer-facing roles.
Branch locations often have lower-performing network technology to begin with, and the ongoing practice of consolidating IT resources away from branch locations further compounds network QoS challenges. Meanwhile, the need for pervasive wireless connectivity and mobile device support has rapidly become the norm.
Given all that, it is no surprise that many branch office employees complain of chronically poor application response time and reliability.
Trends around cloud computing and SaaS adoption turn the heat up even higher. Cloud-based applications and data are not only “more remote” but also more dependent on network performance. Accessing more and more remote services over the WAN greatly increases the likelihood of bandwidth, latency and QoS issues, and further complicates the task of managing the performance of branch office networks.
As the network manager, the ability to validate and assure service quality is essential. Yet you often lack visibility into the user experience. This is particularly true for cloud and SaaS services, since these may not pass through a central monitoring point and are delivered over highly complex multi-owned third party networks.
IT is also challenged with troubleshooting in today’s bandwidth-hungry, network-sensitive applications. Is degrading application performance a result of insufficient bandwidth, inefficient application design, spikes in network usage, or some other issue that you can’t see? Sending network engineers to remote sites is expensive, and often fails to resolve intermittent problems. A lack of visibility and performance metrics also makes it difficult to optimize the network or plan for new services or capacity upgrades – a major concern as more and more organizations transform their network architectures to better support cloud services.
To pinpoint and rectify problems and ensure the quality of cloud and SaaS applications (as well as other bandwidth-intensive, IP-based services like IP storage, VoIP, video conferencing and virtual desktop infrastructure), you need the capability to remotely monitor bandwidth, latency and other key metrics across the network path end-to-end — from branch locations to third-party clouds and back, regardless of who owns the networks.
End-to-end visibility into network performance is the only way to know what services are consuming what network resources; and to understand the level of service quality remote users are experiencing. It is also extremely helpful for monitoring and tuning network performance in the context of cloud-driven network topology changes and the rollout of new, IP-based services.
AppNeta’s PathView Cloud service meets the requirements of any size organization for remote network performance monitoring and management. It delivers unlimited insight and is simple and cost-effective to deploy and manage, while readily scaling to meet the evolving needs of today’s branch and microbranch locations and their diverse cloud service traffic.
For more information visit www.appneta.com.
Network Performance Management: A Look Back to 2006
Posted by: kathleenisobel in: ● February 13, 2012
Remember when data, video and voice networks were separate? Before cloud was a buzz word, cellphones were only for calls, virtualization was in its infancy and what’s an iPad? Considering all of these changes, it seems an impossible job for network teams to maintain high functioning networks and applications with the flood of changes we have experienced throughout the IT industry. As we are now well into 2012, let’s take a quick visit to what has changed during the past six years.
Managing large, complex, distributed networks has never been easy. But with the dramatic changes that have taken place in both the technology and business landscapes in the past few years, it’s arguably never been harder. Let’s take a look at some of the key trends that have radically transformed our networks – and what it takes to manage their performance – just since 2006.
Network Convergence
The convergence of all forms of communication from texting, to gaming, to streaming onto IP networks has become ubiquitous since 2006, due to the convenience, flexibility, manageability and cost reductions that it offers in comparison with separate infrastructures.
But as users exchange increasingly rich and varied content over the Internet and corporate networks, the demand for more and more bandwidth has grown exponentially. At the same time, IP-based applications have grown increasingly sophisticated and hence increasingly dependent on “clean” network capacity to function optimally. Network managers must not only provide enough capacity, but also ensure that latency, jitter and packet loss are minimized.
Virtualization
In July of 2006, VMware released its VMware Server. Virtualization technologies of all kinds have continued to proliferate and mature as businesses look to save money and streamline their physical IT infrastructures. Of course, an offset of increased virtualization is massively increased network traffic. Distributed virtual server instances must communicate over the network, for example.
Cloud and SaaS
Cloud computing leverages virtualization but takes it to a higher level. There was essentially no buzz about cloud in 2006 – now it has become mainstream.
The key impact of cloud on networks is increased utilization – and a greater need for end-to-end monitoring – as more users interact remotely with performance-sensitive, distributed cloud services. Increased network utilization due to deployment of “private” cloud-based applications has become a major reason why organizations need to pre-assess their network capacity before moving mission-critical business procedures to the cloud.
BYOD
Six years ago, smart phones were much less prevalent than today and tablet computers like the now-omnipresent iPad barely existed. Users are demanding the right to bring their own devices (BYOD) to work, and to be constantly connected to the corporate network.
For the network administrator of 2006, network devices were much better controlled. Healthy devices generally meant a healthy network, and SNMP was available to help ensure visibility. Today SNMP data alone is inadequate to monitor and manage complex, distributed network paths and the proliferation of mobile devices that roam free across corporate WANs.
The Economy
Back in 2006 the US economy was still ticking along nicely. There were concerns about a slowdown, but nothing like the seismic shocks experienced since.
In comparison, today’s IT departments have weathered layoffs, outsourcing, budget cuts and limited resources. The result is a “do more with less” mindset, with a focus on leveraging current investments to the max, and finding the cheapest way possible to implement anything new.
As a result, IT departments are moving away from complex monitoring solutions and embracing small-footprint, inexpensive tools. Many organizations now lack the headcount to manage sophisticated network instrumentation. Today’s multi-tasking administrator handling network monitoring is most concerned with straightforward visibility into the network so he or she can quickly pinpoint and resolve problems, and move on.
A further ramification of this trend is an emphasis on proactively preventing network performance issues. Forward-looking network managers are seeking ways to streamline and fine-tune their networks for optimal efficiency, as opposed to simply “adding more bandwidth.”
A Prognosis
As we look back on the network performance management challenges of 2012 from, say, 2018, what will we see? Very possibly an even more complete reliance on high capacity, high performance, low latency, widely distributed networks to convey ever-greater volumes of all forms of data.
End-to-end insight into key performance metrics like capacity, latency, jitter and packet loss along the entire network path from source to destination and back will probably be more important than ever. So will the ability to monitor network health remotely, and to deploy network performance management tools quickly and cheaply as the network morphs and technology changes.
For network administrators, network engineers and other networking professionals, these are interesting times.
HTML5 Is Ready For Prime Time – And So Are We!
Posted by: stevensmatt in: ● February 8, 2012
There is a lot of good material in the blog-o-sphere about HTML5 vs. Flash and the impending doom of the latter. I’m here to say that HTML5, while still a work in progress, is absolutely ready for prime time and if anyone says you have to wait for it to be ready, they’re either ill-informed or just plain misleading.
You’ve probably heard the news that Adobe had dropped Flash support mobile platforms (yes, Steve was more right than wrong on this one too.)
For mobile developers or even general web developers looking to build a rich internet application (RIA), the loss (Android) or non-arrival (iOS) of Flash reduces the options for building a RIA substantially (for iOS, it’s effectively a choice between HTML5 or writing a native iOS application).
To be sure, Flash isn’t entirely going away anytime soon – for desktop platforms it will probably be around for many more years (it’s a good platform!) as it often sneaks in from 3rd party content that is part of a given site’s layout even if not part of the main site’s content. But with the ever-growing population of flash-less mobile devices being used to browse the web, website site designers (and web-based application developers) are increasingly removing all flash content in order to deliver the same “end user experience” regardless of which platform a site is viewed from.
At AppNeta, we made the complete transition a few years back from a “thick client” UI (written in 100% Java) that needed to be downloaded, installed and maintained on each user’s desktop, to a 100% web-based UI able to be consumed easily from any standard browser. But we didn’t want to give up the interactivity or the presentation options that a thick client offered, so we made heavy use of Flash via Adobe’s open source Flex software development kit. In general, we’ve been very pleased with the results and we receive frequent positive feedback on the look and feel and well as smooth operation of our UI from our 1000′s of end-users across all the major browsers. Kudos to Adobe (and the AppNeta development team) for enabling such a nice user experience from a 100% web-based UI.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right?
But that’s the rub – it _is_ broken.
The PathView Cloud Network Performance Management hosted service is designed to be consumed and used interactively by many different user types ranging from hard-core network engineers (who require instant drill-down and data-mining through a year’s minute-by-minute historical performance data) all the way to IT and Service Delivery management (who need a SLA or SLO report on how their services are running and being consumed by their end-user). And all of these different users require instant access from anyplace at any time – and the “user experience” needs to be consistent, regardless of the device they’re using to access the PathView Cloud service. That’s where the “Flash” / “no Flash” breaks things for our customers.
Today, we partially solve this issue dynamically on the fly for any device that doesn’t have Flash locally installed by smartly auto-rendering content on the server side and presenting it as static JPEG images to the end user. This is a very clever way to enable users to see a close approximation to what they’d see if they had Flash installed locally, but of course the local interactivity of Flash is lost.
When we introduced our latest FlowView add-on for traffic analysis, we knew we were bringing something special to the market in terms of flow-based traffic analysis that could be consumed by anyone, anywhere and without the traditional need to enable netflow, jflow, sflow (or any-other-flow type) on an existing infrastructure. This is a BIG deal. Our original plan was to use Flash for the interactive UI components like we do elsewhere in PathView Cloud, but knowing that our mobile-based users would really want the same level of look and feel (and interactivity!) as our desktop-based customers for this powerful add-on, we decided to test out the HTML5 waters.
In a nutshell, we were very pleasantly surprised with what was possible (today!) with the current generation of browsers using HTML5. We even found a solution for Internet Explorer version 8 (where HTML5 support is known to be fairly limited). We were so pleased in fact, that we released our FlowView update last month in a 100% HTML5 only version – no Flash anywhere. There are some minor presentation things we can’t do quite as well in HTML5 as in Flash (and even those were mostly a factor of learning curve vs. a core technology limitation), but in general the feedback has been very positive. Our mobile device users in particular are very happy.
If you want to check how well your current web browser of choice is doing handling HTML5 today, browse over to http://html5test.com/ - it’s a quick and comprehensive way to score HTML5 browser functionality. Below is screenshot from a typical result showing the actual score out of possible 475:
At the end of the day it really comes down to this; so long Flash – it was great while it lasted. Hello HTML5 – welcome to the party; we’re looking forward to using you completely throughout our UI over the coming months.
If you want to check out our HTML5 implementation for yourself, head over to www.appneta.com/live-demo and we’d love you here your feedback.
How Network Speed & Duplex Settings Can Ruin Your Day (and your application performance)
Posted by: adamtedwards in: ● February 6, 2012
It never fails to amaze me how simple network configuration settings can affect application performance, especially the details that are so susceptible to human error. A global business services provider recently deployed PathView Cloud to monitor network performance between several contact centers. This customer uses VoIP to connect contact centers, and the desktop experience is delivered by VDI. End-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for multiple queues is important. So, assuring VoIP quality across 3rd party WAN links, VDI network performance (capacity), and validating QoS – all a routine and perfect fit for PathView Cloud.
On our first performance check-up with the customer following deployment, poor VoIP performance was reported between two U.S. and UK sites. We hadn’t yet configured notification and scheduled report distribution, so we did a quick check of the path’s performance in PathView’s monitoring module. As you can see in the screen shot below, a high degree of packet loss was observed affecting data and voice. Network capacity was degraded and a large number of impairment events were logged.
The customer had deployed Solarwinds Orion NPM, but they didn’t see a hint of poor performance. We reviewed a series of automated diagnostics in PathView, and it was evident that there was a speed and duplex mismatch between customer and carrier-managed switches.
See how performance can go from perfect at hop 3 to poor at hop 4.
Hop 4’s sub millisecond latency and IP address format indicated the full-half duplex issue was close to the source appliance location at the handoff to the ISP. A quick check with the ISP confirmed that a morning ISP maintenance activity included hard coding speed and duplex in a switch port serving the customer.
The impact significantly impacted VoIP and desktop services at the new site, and a follow up change request was affected the next morning to correct the settings. When it comes to speed and duplex remember a simple rule: auto negotiation on both ports usually works well, as does forcing both ports to the same values. Mixing auto and hard coded often results in mismatch and results in high packet loss as the network is loaded. Packet Loss with voice and video is immediately noticeable, and web applications will slow to a crawl as lost packets are re-transmitted.
You can see in the following screen shot (the ‘after’ picture) where packet loss resolves and network capacity approaches the expected value.
Several lessons can be learned: First, always monitor the network path health connecting your key delivery points to consumption location. Monitoring devices you own is a plus, but not relevant to application performance. Second, always perform a pre-deployment assessment when bringing new sites, WAN circuits, and applications like VoIP and VDI online. Assess for a week or two rather than an hour or two.
And finally, never underestimate the impact of a simple configuration issue like speed and duplex.
Legacy on the Line
Posted by: timferg in: ● February 3, 2012
You won’t hear Tom Brady or Eli Manning speaking publicly about how much this game means to their legacy, but it’s certainly on the mind of everyone not involved with the game this coming Sunday. A win for either of them puts an exclamation mark on their career while a loss has harsh ramifications for their legacy.
Eli Manning
A win against the Patriots puts him in the football Hall of Fame. Two Super Bowl victories against one of the best franchises and quarterbacks of the time cements him as an elite quarterback. A victory would also set the wheels in motion for a true Eli vs. Peyton debate. To date, Peyton only has one Super Bowl victory, and he lost the last one he was in, throwing an untimely interception to lose to the Saints. The potential for Eli to surpass Peyton’s shadow will be there and a Super Bowl MVP wouldn’t hurt his cause.
A loss still nets him a successful season, but it gives him a bigger mountain to climb if he ever wants to be a Hall of Fame candidate. The comparisons to Peyton won’t even be up for consideration until he wins another Super Bowl. His proclamation that he is an elite quarterback will be scoffed at, especially if he struggles against the Patriots less than stellar defense.
Tom Brady
A win will put him for many people as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. At the very least, a win would put him as one of the top 3 quarterbacks in the modern era, somewhere in the pack of Montana and Marino. The debate of Brady vs. Peyton will take a swift turn in Tom’s favor. That debate might not end but Peyton fans will have a tougher hill to climb and be sufficiently downgraded in numbers. If Brady wins it will be his fourth Super Bowl victory, which will tie him with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw. That, in combination with another career season, makes his Hall of Fame induction all the more certain.
A loss would effectively eliminate Brady from the “Greatest of All Time” discussion. He’d be a candidate for certain but few if any would have a legitimate argument for #1 overall. This is a harsh and unfair reality, but losing two Super Bowls and being unable to win another after your 5th year would be a sufficient knock against him, especially since the Patriots have not won the Super Bowl since the “spy gate” incident. It would also seem to create a kryptonite for Brady’s legacy; the New York Giants.
Predict the final score of the game BEFORE SUNDAY and win a full year of FREE PathView Cloud including path-based SLA verification, in depth netflow/traffic analysis, 100% packet capture capabilities and active application performance monitoring (at a value of $8,900!!).
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