The name of the tournament speaks a lot to just how huge the World Cup is in the scheme of worldwide sporting events. The hype and anticipation around the tournament has been steadily growing since the groups were selected back in December. It has received coverage everywhere from local newspapers to espn.com. Videos and commercials have gone viral in a matter of hours as they are played over and over again on Youtube. And now here we are, less than 24 hours away from kick-off.
It’s no surprise that a tournament of this magnitude, that only comes around every four years, were to receive so much hype. Here at Ipswitch, though, we were more concerned with the effect the World Cup was going to have on the performance of networks in regards to companies’ bandwidth consumption jumping as tournament games are streamed live during work hours.
It was our hunch that companies could expect a spike in their bandwidth usage do to live streaming of World Cup games, specifically in Europe and other countries with competing teams. We tested our theory with the creation of our Network Traffic Calculator, and after weeks of collecting data from uses of the calculator, we are happy to report that our expectations are right in line with those of network managers. We collected over 1000 responses through the calculator, and some of our key findings were as follows:
Bandwidth use is expected to increase by 38.85% in participating World Cup Nations to 86.89% during matches
In Europe the figure is expected to double, from 40.25% current average bandwidth use, to 78.67% during key match times
In the UK, despite the culture for some businesses to close during England matches, bandwidth use is still expected to increase by 30.79% to 71.85% of total capacity.
In host nation South Africa, IT Managers are bracing themselves for network bandwidth to be completely maxed out to 100% from a base average of 58% during a typical working day.
Despite not being typically thought of as a football watching nation, the US is somewhat surprisingly expecting bandwidth use to rise to over 80% during some key matches
Check out the Network Traffic calculator for yourself and see what kind of spike in bandwidth usage your network can expect as the World Cup commences.
Network Managers, as you know, don’t typically have a lot of down time on a day-to-day basis.
It seems there’s always some network or user issue popping up (and in most cases it’s more than one issue at a time) so you find yourself running around trying to keep the network running and the users happy.
Not only will including this in your strategy allow you to maintain control and ensure of the peak performance of your network’s bandwidth, it will also ensure your network is not at risk of viruses, malware attacks or any other malicious behavior.
A proper Flow monitoring tool delivers peace of mind, allowing you to have confidence that your network is secure and your bandwidth is not being consumed with such capabilities as:
Support for Popular Flow Formats: The ability to monitor NetFlow, sFlow and JFlow, with support for switches and routers from vendors such as Cisco, Extreme, Juniper, HP and more
Visibility into Network Bandwidth Utilization:Complete, real-time visibility into QoS and exactly how your network bandwidth is being used to ensure optimal network performance
Comprehensive Reporting:Collection of NetFlow, sFlow and JFlow records and conversion into useful reports which track real-time usage as well as historical trends
Threshold Based Alerting: Receiving alerts in real-time when configured thresholds are exceeded allow you to proactively troubleshoot and resolve performance bottlenecks and eliminate malicious behavior
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor is a network traffic analysis solution that offers all of these benefits, allowing you to focus on other business-critical projects while giving you the peace of mind that your network is constantly performing at its peak. Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here is Claudio Robles, one of our WhatsUp Gold experts, offering more insight into the benefits of Flow Monitor.
The World Cup is just three short weeks away. But before you prepare your wardrobe for the month of matches (get those jerseys laundered will you??) we suggest preparing your network for the event.
Now, you may be saying “Huh? What are you talking about; why should I be thinking about my network when I have my team to worry about?”
You should be thinking about your network because you are most definitely not the only one in your office who has their team on their mind.
According to a study by IDC Research, the average organization wastes between 30% and 40% of its network bandwidth to non-work related online activities. Just imagine the spike the in that percentage once the World Cup gets underway!
The 2010 World Cup is the first in the history of the tournament where every game will be streamed online live. You can bet video streaming sites such as YouTube, BBC iPlayer and other BitTorrent video sites will be used to their full potential during these games.
And while it’s nice that your co-workers will never have miss a game at work, you can bet your job will be made more hectic than ever, reacting to bandwidth chokes from the extra usage – or even worse – complete outages.
Check out our Network Traffic Calculator to gain a better idea of your current bandwidth data – and then check out our Flow Monitor plug-in and start preventing bandwidth problems before they ruin your day!
Thanks to our partners we are able to reach a large and diverse number of international clients. This wouldn’t be possible without the exceptional help of our International Distributors of the Year for 2009:
Infinigate Deutschland in Europe, Middle East and Africa; ZeroOne Technology Taiwan in Asia Pacific; and LicenciasOnline in Latin America took charge in their respective regions and delivered impressive results.
The WhatsUp Gold Partner Program provides WUG ninjas such as these with resources, certifications, marketing opportunities, expertise, and training on the most up-to-date WUG products. Through collaboration like this, WhatsUp Gold stands to reach network managers in need of solutions in every corner of the world.
Want to learn how to become a WhatsUp Gold Partner? Visit our Partner Section.
Not long after it was posted a WhatsUp Gold user commented and told us he was disappointed with our list. It didn’t provide him with the broader information of the Network Management universe he had expected to find he said. Instead he said he felt like our paper read a bit too much like marketing material for WhatsUp Gold.
Now, of course we’d love to see every network in the world monitored by WhatsUp Gold because we know the strength and versatility of our product and firmly stand behind its functionality across the board.
But . . . we’d rather have our customers leave a conversation with us, leave our web site, our blog, our community site, feeling like they got more than a sales pitch from us. We’d rather a customer, or a potential customer, leave with more knowledge about the NM space than they came in with than leave with a WhatsUp Gold service agreement.
And so we went back to work. We took a second look, a third and fourth look, at our Top Ten Requirements list and we added to it and altered it until we felt we had something you would be able to use a resource when researching the best possible Network Management Solution for your network.
Effectively monitoring and managing your network can be complicated, and there is generally more than a few aspects of the network that need to have an eye kept on them. One thing that is becoming increasingly important in proper network monitoring is monitoring your network’s NetFlow. Of course, it is important to really understand what NetFlow is and exactly why it is so important to monitor this within your network.
Ok so, first things first, what is NetFlow exactly? Well, in technical terms, NetFlow is a Cisco developed technology that provides statistical information on traffic passing through NetFlow enabled devices like top hosts, protocols, applications and conversations.
Basically, NetFlow gives you in-depth insight into how your network is performing. (Yes, this means that during March Madness, your company’s network managers were well aware of everyone who was streaming live games during the opening two days of the tournament.) It allows network managers to collect comprehensive information about their network’s performance and how the bandwidth is being used, making it easy to identify, view and report on the details of its utilization. By implementing a NetFlow monitoring tool into your network management strategy, you gain the ability to expand upon your efforts and begin monitoring your network’s performance, network planning, performing security analysis, analyzing traffic and bandwidth utilization, monitoring users and a number of other things.
Obviously, being equipped with the knowledge of the technology is a good way to approach monitoring the many aspects of your network effectively, however you also need to employ the efforts of the proper tools. WhatsUp Gold offers an easy to integrate plug-in called the WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor, which offers you all of the features necessary to properly monitor your network’s performance and bandwidth utilization. Here is a quick tutorial about WhatsUp Gold’s powerful NetFlow Monitor tool.
