Daily Network Monitor

By David Karp

I spent some time in flow state yesterday at work.  That’s rare for me, unfortunately.  The life of a middle manager can be full of interruptions and meetings and crises, with precious few opportunities to buckle down and get some honest work done.  I’m sure you can relate, whatever your job might be.

For those who don’t know, flow state is “…the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” [wikipedia]  It’s hard to explain, but when you’re in it, you don’t really feel the passage of time, you don’t get tired or bored, and you crank out lots of work, usually very good work.  Being able to get into flow at will is something to aspire to, something great artists and athletes can do.

What’s interesting about this – at least it’s interesting to me – is that I got into flow doing something that’s not usually part of my job.  I was setting up the next incarnation of The Daily Network Monitor Blog in WordPress.  I am by no means a codemonkey, but I was up to my elbows in PHP and CSS and RSS, and I was seriously into it and suddenly it was dark when I looked up from my computer.  I’m not going to pretend to have a hidden talent for programming, but I think I did pretty well.  You can judge for yourself when the new site goes live.

Until then, I hope you all step away from the reader and find a project that needs doing that you can dive into and achieve some flow.  Happy new year.

Popularity: 1% [?]

By Ennio Carboni

If your wondering why confusion is mutating from one area of the network to the next, sit down with a large cup of coffee and read a weeks worth of hypothesis by varying authors regarding the look of converging networks and the resulting change in the network administrators’ role.

Last night I read the follow-up posting from a GigaOM article debating the merits of having a network engineer/administrator on the staff of a Web 2.0 company. The post’s author, Allan Leinwand, says a Web 2.0er recently told him that connecting to the Internet was like connecting to the electrical grid – you don’t need an electrical engineering degree for the latter and you don’t need a network engineer for the former.

I call this absolute nonsense and commend the Network World online staff for correctly pointing out, “the very servers that you read NW blogs on are at a co-location facility. Had we just allowed the third party to manage our systems, we may not have discovered a peering issue that was causing a decrease in site performance. Maybe these Web 2.0ers need to think a little more deeply about the plumbing side of the Web instead of just trying to impress their peers with the latest AJAX script.”

The world of Web 2.0 is exciting but it’s my strong opinion that it provides new challenges and opportunities for the network administrator and not the elimination of his or her job. The comparison of Web 2.0 to an electrical grid is tactically accurate but does not illustrate the enormous complexity that Web 2.0 provide – after all, I can’t recall another technology initiative that promised every device in the network connectivity.

I think we better hold on to the network administrators.

Popularity: 1% [?]

By Ennio Carboni

Making Your Pipe Greener

Your reaction to this post may vary depending on your ‘green’ view. I am not a ‘green’ fanatic by any means but I actively try to do my part to keep the place we call home (earth) safe for the next generation. Bombarded daily by environmental commercials, I am also afraid of leasing penalties – after all, I am constantly reminded that I did not inherit this home from my parents and grandparents as I had been accustomed to thinking but rather I am leasing it from my son and the rest of his generation. Having seen his 2-year-old temper explode already, I am sure he would penalize me immediately if he found my behavior degraded his place of habitation in any way.

Earlier this week, the IEEE introduced a new initiative designed to make idle or underutilized Ethernet connections more energy efficient, which could mean huge electrical cost savings for large enterprises. The trick: finding a way to seamlessly throttle between 10Mbps and 10Gbps.

Per their announcement, “The standards outfit recently formed an Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) study group to explore how to do this. The idea is to save power in PCs and laptops (most of which ship with GigE cards now) when LAN links are idle, or not utilizing full bandwidth. Researchers estimate that U.S. companies could collectively save $450 million a year in power costs by using such a technology.”

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By Ennio Carboni

IPv6 was created a decade ago by the Internet Engineering Task Force to solve the anticipated address space crunch with IPv4. IPv6, which uses a 128-bit addressing, supports an almost abundant number of uniquely identified systems on the internet, while IPv4 supports only a few billion systems because it uses a 32-bit addressing scheme. Furthermore, the United States has consumed the majority of available IPv4 addresses, leaving countries like China to speculate about forcing citizens to share IP addresses.

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By Greg Paul

In a rather intriguing article in the Windows Networking Newsletter by Dave Kearns.

As Dave points out, “About 20 years ago, the U.S. standardized on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October as the dates to change. Soon thereafter, the Windows operating system knew to check the date and adjust the time on those occasions.

That all changes this year. Starting in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. There will be patches for your server and desktop operating systems (and your laptops, palmtops and all the other Windows platforms) and the automated changes will continue to occur at the right time – provided you’ve patched your systems up to date by the beginning of March 2007.

But there’s a trap lurking on most of your computers which, while not quite as serious as the old Y2K bug, will still be almost as annoying to overcome. And not only is it NOT Microsoft’s fault, but you can lay the blame directly at the feet of Sun. ”

“Sun’s Java Runtime Engine (JRE) has its own built-in time calculation, just like Windows. Unfortunately, it’s embedded in the JRE. There’s no easy way to create a simple patch that can be applied to any version of the JRE – you actually have to install a totally recompiled JRE that has the updated rules embedded in it.”

“Because of the way that Java apps are distributed, and because no vendor can be sure that you already have a compatible version of the JRE for their application, there are probably dozens of JREs, in different versions, scattered around your computers. That’s dozens on each of them, I might add. And every single one of them needs to be replaced. Better get started, you’ve only got four months! ”

Here is a link to the entire article.

Popularity: unranked [?]

By Ennio Carboni

The Internet’s underlying protocols, which determine how data routes across the Internet, can often cause users to experience slow downloads, trouble accessing a Web site, or poor video and audio streaming quality. One Ring Networks, provider of next generation end-to-end telecommunications services, addressed these problems today when it announced the deployment of the Internap Flow Control Platform™ (FCP), a premise-based appliance that proactively optimizes network traffic. Headquartered in Atlanta, Internap® Network Services Corporation offers a suite of technology and services that help businesses take advantage of the flexibility, reach and cost advantages of the Internet.

“Performance is our primary concern. Internap’s FCP helps One Ring Networks improve user experience – especially for real-time applications that are more sensitive to latency, packet loss and jitter. The FCP measures all of these factors then selects the best network route in real-time,” explained Matt Liotta, Founder of One Ring Networks. “The result for One Ring’s customers is faster, higher-quality connections.”

One Ring Networks currently multi-homes with four network service providers (NSPs), including a major European carrier. While carrier diversity is beneficial, the company wanted to further differentiate the value of its service. By adding Internap’s proprietary route control technology, One Ring has effectively optimized its network and notes significant performance improvements of both domestic and international traffic flows.

Most multi-homed networks rely solely on Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the basic protocol that operates between the many networks that make up the Internet, to determine which route to take for any given destination. Since BGP is unaware of the path quality between two networks— performance can suffer. The Internap FCP proactively reviews each network for the best performing route and directs traffic according to its performance policy, which includes such metrics as latency and packet loss.

“Because of BGP and the fact that no single network is the optimal path to all destinations on the Internet, certain performance challenges are fundamental,” said David Abrahamson, executive vice president of global sales, Internap. “The good news is that by adding the intelligence of the FCP to its multi-homed environment, One Ring Networks can overcome those shortcomings to deliver optimal performance.”

The FCP also includes user-friendly reporting tools that provide visibility into various network performance metrics. Called FlowView™ and FlowPreview™, the added features include a graphic interface and use real-time data to generate comprehensive management reports.

See the entire story here.

“Diagnostics that would normally take a considerable amount of time are now automated,” Liotta added. “FlowView let’s my team see key measurements and an analysis of traffic flows at any given time, which allows them to focus on other aspects of managing the network.”

One Ring Networks operates an extensive, high-speed fixed wireless network that offers both carrier and physical redundancy for fiber and multiple T connections. For companies that require 100 percent availability of online services, One Ring offers fixed wireless redundancy options that provide real-time fail-over from wire line circuits.

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