The best WAN advice of 2012

What were the most popular tips for network engineers and IT managers dealing with enterprise wide area networks (WANs) in 2012? We took the top five advice articles from SearchEnterpriseWAN.com to give you a countdown of the year’s most pertinent tips:

No. 5: Calculating mobile application bandwidth requirements

It’s no secret mobile devices have infiltrated enterprise networks, whether through the consumerization of IT or through BYOD policies. In turn, IT managers have seen more network traffic coming from mobile applications. How can IT calculate the bandwidth requirements for these mobile applications? Tip writer Michael Finneran takes you through the calculations in this top tip of 2012.  

No. 4: Three ways to optimize TCP/IP

Despite the hype around video conferencing and other real-time based applications, a great deal of network traffic is still based on TCP/IP. In this tip, WAN optimization expert Henry Svendblad offers three ways for enterprises to optimize TCP-based network traffic.   

No. 3: Measuring network throughput using iPerf

As cheap as bandwidth has become, it’s still a huge enterprise expense. Often times, the bandwidth enterprises pay for is not what they are getting in terms of network throughput. That’s why we asked network testing guru Kevin Tolly to give us tips on how to measure wide area network throughput. In this article he shows us how to use free networking tool, iPerf, to accomplish this. 

No. 2: Deciding between hardware and software WAN optimizers

Since the term “virtualization” was coined, the tech industry has gone to great lengths to virtualize just about everything imaginable — including WAN optimization controllers (WOCs). While at first virtual WOCs performed less efficiently than their hardware counterparts, that no longer speaks true today. Nemertes Research Principal Analyst John Burke presents these tips to help IT decide between hardware and software (virtual) WAN optimizers.

No. 1: Choosing the best WAN connectivity option

More than measuring network throughput, calculating bandwidth and choosing WAN optimization controllers — IT managers have wanted nothing more than to make the right telecom service decision. The most popular WAN connectivity options have included Ethernet and MPLS. Experts Johna Till Johnson and Paul Kirvan explain the benefits and drawbacks of each and list them neatly in this tech comparison chart.

When I attended Interop NYC last fall, Jim Metzler hosted a session called “A comparison of WAN optimization controllers.” Here, essentially, is the product of that session in a comprehensive unbiased tutorial comparing products, including Cisco’s WAAS WAN optimization, Riverbed’s Steelhead WAN optimization, Ipanema Technologies’ WAN products and more. While it was nice to hear each vendor talk about its own, surprisingly very different, solution during the session — I found it much more useful to look at the WAN optimization controller market through Metzler’s third-party eye.

Let us know how Metzler’s WAN optimization vendor comparison guide helped you choose the best WAN optimization vendor for your enterprise at Editor@SearchEnterpriseWAN.com or feel free to comment below.

Most of the vendors we talk to, including those involved in very heavyweight and mission-critical applications like CRM and ERP, insist that current Internet security safeguards and firewall filters are enough to keep everything safe and secure on your WAN, LAN, PAN and so on. A representative for a very big and very well-known enterprise software company also said – quite blithely – that security is the user’s problem and not a big blip on their radar.

This attitude is surprising, given the fact that companies are expected to spend more on security software and services next year, even as the budgets for other infrastructure segments are declining as a result of the weakened economy.

Spending on security software and services is expected to outpace that for general IT, according to market researcher Gartner Inc. Software security spending is expected to grow by approximately 4% in 2010, while spending on security services is projected to grow almost 3%, Gartner reports from a survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals with worldwide budget responsibilities.

The uptick in security spending is in part being driven by a shift toward managed security services, cloud-based email/Web-security solutions, and third-party compliance-related consulting and vulnerability audits and scans, Gartner points out.

Companies looking to validate a higher budget for security spending probably don’t have to look any further than the firms in their own geographic and industry-segment backyard. In its comprehensive Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon Business documented 90 confirmed security breaches within the businesses that employ its services, totaling roughly 285 million compromised records. Roughly 74% of these breaches came from outside sources and 20% from insiders.

The industries hardest hit by security problems include retail (31%), financial (30%), and food and beverage (14%).

“Businesses should also recognize that new threats or vulnerabilities may require security spending that exceeds the amounts allocated and should consider setting aside up to 15% of the IT security budget to address the potential risks and impact of such unforeseen issues,” said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner.

We couldn’t agree more, especially as more efforts are made to speed things up and boost performance in the WAN, and companies rely more on cloud-based and managed services — all areas that we will be covering more as we move toward the final quarter of 2009 and look for ways to approach networking in a more strategic and security-minded fashion in 2010.

** Gartner’s report, Security Software and Services Spending Will Outpace Other IT Spending Areas in 2010, is available for a fee on the company’s website.

]]> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/network-security-spending-driven-by-cloud-computing-managed-services/feed/ 0 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/pinpoint-critical-applications-when-mapping-out-a-wan-plan/ http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/pinpoint-critical-applications-when-mapping-out-a-wan-plan/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:23:46 +0000 TScannell http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/?p=226 In the evolving world of WAN optimization, applications are the new currency in terms of buying into a system that can deliver top performance and is flexible enough to handle changing user demands.  Smart network designers will not only look very carefully at the types of applications that zip across a wired and wireless network, but also prioritize them according to their importance and “mission critical” makeup.

This is not always an easy task, especially if you are dealing with extensive networks that reach out to branch offices and remote users, as well as multiple service level agreements (SLAs).  It also becomes a daunting task since the natural tendency for users is to rate their most-used applications as the most critical – even though that may not necessarily be the case.  This can create problems if an organization is running tens of thousands of applications.  The trick is to zero in on the ones that are absolutely necessary, notes consultant Jim Metzler, vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.   It is critical to narrow that range, he says.

In planning for new equipment additions or WAN upgrades, it is also makes sense to review the applications bouncing around on a network and select equipment based on the mission critical nature of your most key software.

This is exactly what the IT staff did at Performance Health Technology, Ltd. (PH Tech), a healthcare information services provider that specializes in providing up-to-date information on patient benefits and insurance coverage to doctor and hospital subscribers nationwide.  The company previously relied on T1 and a WiMAX connection, but ran into all sorts of reliability issues – some related to weather interference.  The solution was to install an Ecessa Corp. PowerLink WAN controller that could quickly route around faulty connection addresses and channels to find a reliable connection.

The idea is to keep the most important applications and data up and running, even when network issues create a roadblock.  This goes way beyond basic reliability, of course, since the health and welfare of critical networks have a direct impact on business continuity.

Over the next several weeks, SearchEnterpriseWAN will be looking closely at issues including  WAN reliability, fail-safe and contingency planning, specifically focusing on companies that have tackled these issues at the mission critical front lines.  These profiles show that pre-planning is crucial to developing and launching an effective network, and absolutely mandatory as companies rely more on unfaltering access to applications and data.