While measuring WAN latency can be done at no cost with ping, it’s best not to run ping continually as a company’s only wide area network (WAN) monitoring tool. After all, that would take up precious bandwidth. In most cases, ping is a good starting point to investigate network traffic, but a more robust solution is needed — a monitoring solution that includes both flow- and packet-based analysis.

However, not every enterprise has the budget or in-house expertise to deploy such robust WAN monitoring. In these cases, enterprises should consider outsourcing their WAN monitoring to a provider, according to Amy Larsen DeCarlo of Current Analysis.

In her article on WAN monitoring, she covers the merits of buying and outsourcing monitoring solutions and gives enterprises pointers on how to establish trust with providers that run your WAN monitoring and management. Find out whether outsourcing your monitoring solution is the right choice for your enterprise: WAN monitoring: Should you outsource?

Janno Schouwenburg, a consultant for a service provider in the Netherlands, says he sees far too many enterprises get seduced by Ethernet services’ huge capacity boost and cost savings without fully considering the impact on the WAN and other IT services.

So, before you sign that contract, check out what he had to say (published with permission):

We have a high penetration of Metro Ethernet services next to other means of connectivity [in the Netherlands]. Yes, Metro Ethernet services are way cheaper than the old and almost legacy IP VPN MPLS networks. But there is also a reason for that: Metro Ethernet services are dumb, stupid and simple–for the provider.

Most customers don’t find out until a few months after migration that they got themselves into a lot of trouble. They need so much more knowledge than before, and most customers don’t have those kinds of resources or even see that they need [to learn more about the technology]. Most IP VPN customers used to outsource that knowledge to managed CPE services, and think they can do it themselves when the T1 is migrated to Ethernet.

First of all, they need the right equipment to connect to Ethernet VPNs because subrates of interfaces are very common–that is, a 300 Mbps line is not a 1 Gbps line, although it connects to a 1 Gbps interface.

Then there is no QoS or CoS. OK, if you are used to having 1.5 Mbps and now have 10 Mbps or even 100 Mbps, it seems perfect at first. But when you are [using it for] mission critical [applications] or the users just want a clean voice call, then you get into trouble. Then we all start moving servers around (consolidation, virtualization), trying to build redundancy, etc., and we are back where we came from: complexity. So, who’s gonna help the customer to get the IT infrastructure working again? I see this scenario now every week with our clients and I can only conclude: Networks are damned complex!

This comes after reports that many of Asia’s telecom operators are scrambling to repair undersea cables that were damaged by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last week. However, it’s unclear from CNN’s report whether the military blacklisted these sites as a preemptive measure or if bandwidth (particularly for its U.S. Pacific Command, which requested the ban) was directly affected by service disruptions.

The news sparked some suspicions that the bans were related to security concerns or productivity, but notably absent from the list of blacklisted sites is the king of time-wasters — Facebook.

Aside from some of the Flash-heavy games, such as Farmville (which I’m guessing the Department of Defense already has some means in place to block), Facebook isn’t a comparatively huge bandwidth hog. That seems to corroborate the military’s claims that their chief concern is making sure there’s enough bandwidth across their network for critical applications.

However, a small debate appeared in the reader comments below CNN’s story: One reader suggests that blocking the sites is unnecessary because the same goal could be achieved by using quality of service (QoS) to prioritize critical applications and websites above the ones currently banned. Another reader countered that implementing those policies would be too time-consuming under emergency circumstances.

That counterpoint struck me as interesting, considering how much we hear from vendors such as Ipanema (and to some extent, Riverbed)  about automation, ease of configuration and dynamic QoS.  It sounds good in theory, but I guess when you are in the midst of a major environmental, humanitarian and nuclear crisis, do you really want to risk spending too much time fiddling with configurations to throttle Internet radio?

Experts in the industry have learned tricks along the way to help you spend less time troubleshooting and more time implementing techniques to keep your company competitive. Respected IT pros Jim Metzler, John Bartlett and Brent Chapman plan to share their tips with you in our free virtual seminar, entitled “Optimizing and Managing the Dynamic Enterprise Network.”

Join me Wednesday, June 23, in any or all of these three sessions:

Sign up for this virtual seminar to speak with experts in live Q&As, network with your peers in our virtual lounge, and/or watch vendor product demos, all from the comfort of your own desk… Plus, one lucky attendee will win an iPad.

I hope you can make it, and I really look forward to meeting you June 23!
Tessa Parmenter

Expert Tom Nolle points out this WAN management/monitoring convergence in his tip series on how your WAN network monitoring strategy needs to evolve and what network monitoring tools need in a WAN supported by less staff and newer technology:

One reflection of the evolution of monitoring is its collision with network management. A WAN network monitoring strategy has always required the analysis of traffic in real time, but most management systems support at least some form of real-time traffic analysis too; so the distinction between monitoring and management may become more cloudy.

What’s good to know is that vendors are beginning to catch up in their offerings. NetScout’s embedded branch office network monitoring probe in Cisco’s ISR, announced last week, is an example of the many other branch office monitoring tools that can resolve WAN performance problems and keep your users from complaining about slow network speeds over the WAN.

This is the case with Uplogix, Inc., a Texas-based provider of automated network management solutions that recently launched a promotion campaign that offers a free t-shirt to promote its technology that reportedly extends network management capabilities to the very edge of your wired and wireless architectures. The solution claims to reduce the cost and complexity of managing networks by offering the ability to automate the process of remote management and recovery even when the network is down. The promotion debuted late last month at Cisco Live! in San Francisco (Uplogix is a Cisco partner).

All very well and good and important, but I have to admit I sort of like the striking black t-shirt, which boldly states ‘Keep Your Edge’ on the front. It could be referring to personality, or maybe one’s management skills — although I am sure Uplogix wants to keep its automated network management solution top of mind. The t-shirt is available free from Uplogix to anyone who takes the time to write in and tell the company about their best ‘life on the edge’ experience.

The company’s t-shirt promotion doesn’t stop there, however. If you send in your edge-estential story Uplogix will enter your name in a drawing for a Rovio Wi-Fi-enabled mobile Webcam with streaming audio and video. This is a really cool device that can be remotely controlled via computer, cell phone, PDA or game console from anywhere in the world. With it, you can wander through your home or office and use the built-in video camera and microphone to see and hear everything in its path. The device even has an LED headlight for dimly-lit locations, which might very well be the career path of anyone who uses it to spy on people at the office or spends too much time using it during business hours.

Once you get your t-shirt, the company invites you to upload a photograph of you wearing it in the most unique or clever location. Photos are posted on the company’s official t-shirt Web site, although I have to admit many of them look like mug shots from a cable access version of CSI. A number of t-shirt wearing people also seem to be having way too much 100% pre-shrunk cotton fun.

Remember the good old days, when t-shirts were simply given away at trade shows, or maybe shot from one of those cannon devices into an audience? The times, they are a changin’, and hopefully the t-shirts once they are worn a little too long.