Sysadmins in the dark about network problems

Killer apps strain bandwidth

By John Leyden, 7th August 2003

SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had

Most IT managers are in the dark about what applications are running on their corporate networks.

This lack of knowledge leaves sysadmins with few clues about traffic that could be causing application performance problems, Packeteer claims

The network software firm has conducted a survey which reveals that 75 per cent of IT managers admit their knowledge of applications on their network range from 'knowing some' to 'do not know'. More than half (59 per cent) of the 180 IT managers quizzed by Packateer would increase bandwidth to solve problem of poor application performance and network traffic congestion.

This is expensive and often ineffective, Packeteer warns.

"Rather than adding more bandwidth - which would only provide more fuel for non-critical applications like music downloads, or internet radio - network and IT managers need to prioritise the applications that run over the network, making smarter use of the bandwidth they already have, said Roger Hockaday, director of marketing at Packeteer. "The knee-jerk response of adding more bandwidth is costly and impractical; companies will just be storing up more trouble for the
future."

According to Packeteer the answer is to use better network monitoring tools, such as its own application traffic management technology, which give "insight into which applications are consuming bandwidth and impacting mission critical traffic."

Almost two-thirds (61 per cent) of companies interviewed had experienced incidents of significant application performance degradation, with a third of respondents citing loss of team productivity as an important impact on their businesses. A further 37 percent agreed that stilted application
performance impinged on customer service.

"The fact that 82 percent of network managers who responded to the survey said that they normally first learn about application performance problems when 'employees complain', shows that currently deployed monitoring technology, capable of measuring such performance and tracking what traffic is running over their networks, is clearly ineffective," Hockaday said. ®