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Slow Applications Despite Frequent Bandwidth Upgrades?


Slow Applications Despite Frequent Bandwidth Upgrades?

Poor application performance - 3 problems that cannot be identified using a bandwidth monitoring tool

Poor Switch Performance - Excessive Backplane Utilization1) Poor Switch Performance - Excessive Backplane Utilization

    By monitoring your switch's backplane utilization, you get to know how much of the switch's maximum throughput is put to full use. High backplane utilization will result in your switch ports receiving too much of network traffic to further cause packet loss, discards and slow applications. Many switches have this parameter accessible via SNMP so most network monitoring systems would be able to monitor, report and alert the Network Administrator on excessive backplane utilization.

2) Poor Router Performance - Configuration Changes

LAN Traffic loss, slowness - Duplex mismatches, Excessive Errors and Discards
    A flawed IOS update or configuration change on your routers can result in drastic increase in memory, causing slow routing of traffic across the network. You will need to continuously monitor the router's memory, CPU, temperature and other hardware health parameters to ensure proper working. Having a network change and configuration management system that alerts on any configuration changes on your critical network devices will also help.

Zero Visibility over WAN Links3) Traffic Delay Over WAN Links

    When you have applications being accessed across a WAN, slight delay in a single WAN link will have huge effects on application performance for the end user. It is important to continuously monitor delay, packet loss, bandwidth consumption for each WAN link. One way of getting this information is by enabling Cisco IP SLA on Cisco routers and procuring network monitoring solutions that leverage this technology to present valuable reports.

For more, read the integrated network management whitepaper from ManageEngine. The whitepaper includes screens from OpManager, the network monitoring software, to present solutions to common network problems


Last updated: 2009/12/10
Author Name: Sreelesh Pillai, ManageEngine, ZOHO Corp.