-1- Whitepaper: 7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion 7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion -1- Summary Today’s enterprise networks are facing unprecedented demands – streaming video, employee-owned mobile devices, and collaboration tools are all contributing to far more trafc than email, FTP and general web surfng produced just a few years ago. When you consider that business IP trafc is projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 21% from 2012 to 2017 – that’s faster than IP WAN (13%) but only a fraction of the projected growth rate for mobile business Internet (59%). As more devices enter the network and generate these forecasted levels of activity, the corporate IT environment will only get harder to manage. What does this mean for IT administrators? Increased usage leads to networks that are congested and can’t scale, and frustrated end users who just want their applications to perform better and faster. IT managers responsible for solving network congestion problems often resort to one of three approaches: adding bandwidth, accelerating network trafc, or cutting of access to applications believed to be causing congestion. Adding bandwidth can address the issue, but it’s a short-term fx that creates two problems. First, because network usage continues to increase, IT budgets also continue to increase in perpetuity, which isn’t sustainable. Second, increases in bandwidth demand have outpaced decreases in bandwidth cost. Just adding bandwidth treats all applications the same – from strategic business apps to visits to YouTube. In efect, network administrators are funding the increases in recreational trafc, which only temporarily and partially solves the congestion problem. Another common approach is application acceleration. Some companies invest in solutions that accelerate everything on the network, including unwanted and unproductive recreational trafc. Just like adding more bandwidth, this approach treats all trafc the same. In a sense, businesses are spending money to improve not only the speed of their critical applications, but their recreational applications as well. Finally, cutting of access to applications believed to be causing congestion is not feasible either. Sure, you will want to control users watching cat videos on YouTube, however, the CEO could also be utilizing video for a demo on the fscal results call. Treating all users and use cases the same is a partial, inelegant solution at best. To reduce network congestion without funding inefcient solutions or imposing heavy-handed restrictions on users, companies need to manage trafc across fve key dimensions of the network – users, apps, devices, locations, and activities. Doing so enables network managers to create specifc policies that optimize and protect the performance of business-critical applications, white limiting the impact of recreational trafc. By taking this approach, network managers can reclaim bandwidth for strategic applications and reduce overall network costs. Below are seven tips you can add to your network management toolkit today to reduce network congestion: 1. Look into the network: What’s the problem? Who’s causing it? The frst step in solving congestion problems and improving network performance is determining what’s causing the congestion. Find out which applications are in use, how much trafc is generated by each, and decide how important these applications are to the needs of the business. Identify whether there are high trafc periods during the day or month and whether some applications have special quality of service requirements. Without an accurate understanding of current trafc on the network, any action to relieve congestion will only be a guess. 7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion -2- 2. Reduce trafc via caching Cache frequently accessed web objects locally so only new ones are downloaded. If multiple requests are made for the same objects multiple times, overall bandwidth consumption increases. For instance, patch bundles or software upgrades can be downloaded from an external site once, and subsequent requests will beneft from proximity. Multiple users attempting to download the same fle can seriously impact network performance and take away from business-critical applications. Using caching strategically can improve performance and lower bandwidth utilization. 3. Control Recreational Traffic Place limits on the amount of recreational trafc that can be consumed during work hours. You can still allow access to recreational sites, but give priority to business applications. Even if your company’s web policy allows personal and recreational use, non-business content can become an unneeded burden on the network. Through real time monitoring and policy-based shaping, network resources can be assured for business-critical needs. 4. Time-shift your network Are certain applications regularly used at defned times? Create policies that refect this, and shift network resources to these applications as needed. Analysis of the applications in use and the nature of the trafc they generate can uncover groups that compete for scarce resources and indicate whether they would beneft from simple scheduling changes. For instance, backup windows could be adjusted to prevent interfering with batch data transfers or replication transports. This reduction in network contention can signifcantly improve end-to- end performance and usability. 5. Don’t treat all business trafc the same Categorize trafc into three buckets: Reputational: items that would have a direct impact on current or future business, based on customer perceptions about availability and performance. Revenue-afecting: Items that would prevent or decrease the amount or rate of income, whether based on sales or production/fulfllment. Mission-critical internal: Items that are necessary to support functions not purely customer-facing or proft-generating but that are needed for daily operations and ongoing business functions. Reputational trafc should be the initial focus, but not to the detriment of the remaining trafc. 6. Manage and prioritize at a user level Determine who the user is and what application is being used. Is the CEO using videoconferencing to speak to key investors? Where is the user? Is he logged in remotely? 7. After analyzing trafc on the network, create an intelligent policy Allocate network resources based on a predetermined set of criteria. For instance, during the hour that the CEO is making a video-conferencing call, 40% of the organization’s available bandwidth might be allocated to the call, while 15% is allocated to a marketing video and the other 45% is dedicated to other activities. 7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion -3- Exinda is a leading global supplier of WAN solutions that enables organizations to assure a predictable user experience for strategic business applications through policy-based WAN orchestration. Exinda solutions intelligently allocate network bandwidth and optimize trafc based on the priorities of the business. The company has helped more than 3,500 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide assure application performance, improve the end-user experience, contain recreational applications and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com. About Exinda WhitePaper_7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion Copyright 2014, Exinda Networks Inc. www.exinda.com 1.877.439.4632 Facebook “f ” Logo CMYK / .eps WAN Performance Is Critical As the network’s importance as a strategic business asset has grown, it’s also gotten a lot more difcult to manage. Networks are far more complex today than ever before, and the top problems IT departments deal with on a daily basis are much harder to solve. In fact, 34% of IT managers say troubleshooting network problems like alleviating congestion is their biggest challenge today. Eliminating network congestion begins with implementing an intelligent network management tool that can monitor and analyze trafc patterns on the network in real time. Despite the need for this functionality, only 35% of IT managers have invested in such a tool, while 81% have increased bandwidth capacity. Some IT managers have turned to WAN optimization appliances in an attempt to reduce network congestion and improve network performance via compression and acceleration techniques. However, a tool that was designed 10 years ago that only focuses on making the network faster is not enough to solve network congestion problems today. WAN optimization solutions were not built to manage streaming video, mobile devices, or cloud-based apps, all of which add to this growing network congestion problem. To efectively solve today’s pressing IT problems, network managers must move beyond traditional WAN optimization appliances and implement WAN orchestration solutions to repair network issues and deliver reliable user experiences. Orchestration solutions bring together all the most important features a WAN solution needs to solve complex problems and makes them work in harmony. By combining analytics, purpose-built reports, a recommendation engine and power actions like trafc shaping and application acceleration all in one platform, IT managers can quickly pinpoint the source of delays and poor application response times, to resolve these issues quickly and restore optimal service for end users. For more information To learn more about how you can orchestrate network resources to reduce congestion, please contact us to speak with our team of network experts:
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