Daily Network Monitor

By sbarry

Would you pay eight times the price of an apple for the same apple or even a less appetizing apple? My guess is absolutely not. Maybe you’ve seen the apples-to-apples comparison on our website. If not, check it out. Needless to say, WhatsUp Gold delivers more for your money than the competition. Cough, cough, Solarwinds.

Whether it’s our device-based pricing system, array of plug-ins, or comprehensive and easy-to-use interface, WhatsUp Gold offers a superior value. Our apples-to-apples comparison of WhatsUp Gold vs. SolarWinds Orion pretty much sums it up.

WhatsUp Gold offers:

• Out of the box support for custom and non-custom MIBS
• Mobile Access
• Real-time alerts on Bandwidth Usage Violations
• Blackout alerting & reporting capabilities
• Simple and fair price per device – no overuse hidden costs
• Complete and Modular Security Log Management
• Conversion of raw traffic into standard NetFlow records
• Application Performance Monitoring (Standard)
• Integrated true layer 2 discovery

Solarwinds does not. A more extensive comparison is available in our Whitepaper.

The fact that the capabilities of WhatsUp Gold and Orion are comparable, with a few differences, comes as no surprise given the ever-changing and evolving nature of technology in general. What you may not know is that, punch for punch, WhatsUp Gold comes out on top when you consider the overall cost of ownership. Solarwinds users pay higher acquisition and annual maintenance costs hands down when looking at comparable configurations.

For instance, an infrastructure with 200 network devices (> 2000 network interfaces managed) and 300 servers (>2000 separate monitors) to monitor would require two Orion Enterprise licenses, NPM ($20,975) and APM ($19,995), for a total of $40,970. A configuration with the same device and server count would only require the 500 device license of WhatsUp Gold Premium for $5,195. How do you like them apples?

Popularity: 38% [?]

By Mike Manfredi

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.

Popularity: 36% [?]

By Mike Manfredi

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.

Monitoring and maintaining your network traffic and bandwidth utilization used to be an overlooked aspect of your job, deemed less important. But the rapid evolution of technology has changed the makeup of networks everywhere and has forced network managers to include Flow analysis and monitoring in their network management strategies.

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.

Popularity: 35% [?]

By Mike Manfredi

Ipswitch, Inc. hasn’t forgotten its humble beginnings. In fact, we’re proud of our past.

Roger Greene founded Ipswitch, Inc. in 1991.  We started off small, but thanks to his vision and business savvy and the support of our customers, it’s been nearly twenty years and we’re still private and profitable!

Starting a small business takes moxie. As passionate people ourselves we appreciate that trait in anyone.

It’s for that reason we’re proud to announce that Ipswitch Network Management will donate $1 for every download of its WhatsUp Gold software to Accion USA through May 31^st. 2010.

Accion USA, a leader in U.S. microfinance, provides affordable small business loans to microentrepreneurs.

If you’ve been putting off giving WhatsUp Gold a try, Stop and download today. Not only will you make your life easier, you’ll be making the life of a small business owner somewhere in the U.S. easier too!

Popularity: 34% [?]

By Mike Manfredi

Software should make your life simpler.

That’s been the mantra of our WhatsUp Gold developers from year one, nearly 20 years ago.Today, this dilegence and commitment to our customers was vindicated by NetworkManagementSoftware scribe, Aaron Leskiw.

Leskiw conducted an in-depth review of WhatsUp Gold Premium, focusing on the usability and simplicity of the product in relation to the robust feature set that it delivers.

Leskiw’s bottom line on the review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition was: “The big question is: Does WhatsUp Gold deliver on its promise of making your job easier? Yes it does – and very well! All of the features tested performed superbly and the software was simple to install.

Share in our success (afterall, it’s with your feedback that we’ve successfully developed our user-friendly IT Managemetn solution!) and check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review

Check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review

A recent review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition from Aaron Leskiw on networkmanagementsoftware.com poses the question: Does network management have to be complicated?

Obviously, we think it should be just the opposite, and build our network management solutions with the goal of making the life of a network administrator that much easier. Leskiw conducted a pretty in-depth review of WhatsUp Gold Premium, focusing on the usability and simplicity of the product in relation to the robust feature set that it delivers.

The bottom line on the review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition? Well Leskiw had this to say: “The big question is: Does WhatsUp Gold deliver on its promise of making your job easier? Yes it does – and very well! All of the features tested performed superbly and the software was simple to install.

Check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review

Popularity: 31% [?]

By Ennio Carboni

As President of Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management division I have had the opportunity to speak with many of our customers about their experience using WhatsUp Gold.

Now, because WhatsUp Gold can be deployed and utilized in a variety of ways, each new story I hear varies from the last. But I have noticed a few common themes over the years. One such theme sounds like this:

“The phones stopped ringing as soon as it was deployed on the network.”

In fact, a few weeks ago I had a new customer call up our sales team and rave about the silence he and his team have enjoyed since they implemented WhatsUp Gold on their network. No more phone calls about the network being slow, that this server is down, that the Internet isn’t connecting, etc.

Because of the powerful systems and performance monitoring WhatsUp Gold delivers, these guys are finally the first to know when something is wrong on their network. They can now fix an issue before it affects their users.

This latest customer interaction reminded me of our history with job-search-giant, CareerBuilder. As a longtime user of WhatsUp Gold solutions, our product has literally grown along with CareerBuilder’s company.

In its early stages in 2003, at a point when the job search site was just one-fifth the size of the market leader, they brought in WhatsGold to solve their basic monitoring needs. As they’ve grown and matured, becoming the nation’s largest online job site, WhatsUp Gold has stayed a step ahead to continue to provide them the tool-set and functionality they need to manage a network that now includes close to 1300 devices.

Despite the evolution of technology and the increasing complexity of networks and managing solutions, we know that with most of our customers it is still the little things that make such a big difference. Mark Fouraker, Technologist at CareerBuilder, touches on just that in a favorite quote of mine from this customer story:

“My favorite story about WhatsUp Gold is when I was in an important meeting and was getting silent alerts on my pager about an impending issue on our network. I was sneaking out at breaks to troubleshoot and address the matter, eventually resolving it. The bottom line is that no one outside of a few people in operations had any idea there was even an issue at all. It’s just a beautiful product.”

A story like this is really powerful, in my opinion, because it shows how technology can evolve and customer needs can change, forcing us to continually adapt and innovate our product to meet those changing needs. It also shows that business relationships can certainly last as long as it remains mutually beneficial, with a bit of give and take from both sides.

Popularity: 50% [?]