Telemetry Gaps: 3 Approaches to Erase Your Network Blind Spots

Limited network visibility can plague a business in several ways. Let’s consider the most common blind spots organizations struggle with and the best approaches to close those telemetry gaps.

• Network Monitoring
• Device Managed Services (DMS)
• Network Mapping
• Alerting

Don’t rely on guesswork in network and application troubleshooting. Read and consider how the benefits of our selected approaches can boost your network performance and overall operational success.

Common Blind Spots Challenges in a Network

Traditional trouble spots include:

• SD-WAN
• Network Edges
• Data Centers
• Remote Sites
• Cloud

Why Removing Blind Spots Matters for Business Objectives

Resource Planning

• Identify trends early to plan appropriately for future network needs when network devices are sputtering to a halt etc.

Capacity Planning

• Know how and where your data is increasing any bandwidth abuse
• Visibility lets you track bandwidth use – to see how and where it is being used – this lets you make plans about increasing bandwidth

Less Downtime

• Visibility lets you diagnose network problems
• Because you have that visibility, the problems are fixed faster
• Fewer interruptions to service and, therefore, your business

Data-Based Predictions

• Make more intelligent choices with more information (data) and access to historical data visibility that spans time – use patterns to anticipate network behavior

Greater Employee Efficiency

• Enhanced visibility requires less investigation from engineers on the troubleshooting and resolution side, leaving more time for forward-moving company initiatives

Blind Spot Removal: 3

Approaches

These methods will help you monitor and troubleshoot your network’s digital transformation initiatives and maintain success in daily operations.

01 Network Monitoring

Network monitoring tools validate if policies are working as planned and assist in tracking network performance and health. Some offerings do one or the other. Ideally, you can find one that does both.

• Packet Capture – Packet capture, also known as packet analysis or PCAP sniffing, captures and live packet data from Layers 2-7, traveling across your network. It uses TAPS and Port Mirroring, also known as SPAN, to do this. Packet capture is preferred for granular troubleshooting because it can identify the root cause of network issues. Packet Capture can bring visibility to challenging areas like WiFi connections, data centers, and remote sites.
• Flow Monitoring – Flow analysis enable devices like routers and switches to generate flow data from their IP traffic. This IP-based method provides a high-level summary of network health. Flow monitoring is excellent for observing distributed WAN and SD-WAN links.
  • Flow monitoring also shines a light on network threats. Traffic spikes and peaks in bandwidth usage can indicate a DDoS. Using flow analysis, you can find the IP source from where the malicious traffic originates.

Packet and Flow Network monitoring tools that unite packet and flow monitoring help close blind spots during deployments from the network core to cloud infrastructure.

02 Network Mapping

A topographical visual of the entire network, including remote sites, allows you to monitor WAN links and their dependencies and quickly spot any unusual network activity globally – determine which uplinks handle the highest quantity of traffic and how it flows between sites. See network performance from one dashboard – this lets you pinpoint problem areas in equipment or otherwise. Network mapping is helpful for SDWAN management. You need to be able to see what paths your application traffic takes.

03 Alerting

Set up threshold notifications to see when a slowdown is happening and address any bottlenecks in traffic or when approaching capacity limits.

Setting network notifications for when traffic hits specific metrics gives you immediate feedback on network concerns before conditions worsen. Alerts on increasing latency give NetOps time to respond and remediate before a crash.

Risk for Leaving Blind Spots in Place

Leaving a network visibility strategy out of operational planning can save an organization pennies but lose them dollars.

Interrupted connections, poor application performance, and network outages lead to financial loss that significantly outweighs any initial cost of network monitoring and detection tools. Here are how some of those costs take shape:

Lost business opportunity

• A decline in employee productivity from spotty network availability
• Diminished employee morale from unreliable access to tools they need and systems going down
• Prospects who lose interest from interrupted demos, meetings, or choppy phone calls that come across as red flags

Damaged reputation and credibility

• Tickets and requests go unanswered during outages creating the impression of unresponsiveness.
• Customers are negatively impacted during outages and question if your company has the resources to support your product.

All of these situations lead to real consequences on the fiscal bottom line.

LiveAction is a platform of next-generation tools purpose-built to maximize network visibility and erase your blind spots.

Network Blindness

• NetFlow monitoring – LiveNX tracks NetFlow from network devices and integrates with LiveWire’s packet analysis for unified reporting and visualization
• Packet capture – LiveWire records network packets to provide in-depth network and application performance insights, easily handling 100G networks. LiveWire also extends visibility to the WAN edge.

Edge Blindness

• Track and monitor hard-to-reach places, troubleshoot VoIP calls, and map network topography with LiveWire nodes.

Event Blindness

• Set advanced targeted alerting for custom audiences and at desired thresholds and intervals to avoid “over alerting fatigue.”

Visibility Blindness

• Visually rich topographical network monitoring unites our packet capture and NetFlow analysis products within one interactive dashboard for easy reporting

Don’t settle for managing a network with one eye shut. Choose a platform that can do it all. Get visibility into TDR, APM, and NPM stats from every side. Get the broadest telemetry platform available on the market. Get LiveAction.

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Telemetry Gaps: 3 Approaches to Erase Your Network Blind Spots

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