1. Assume nothing. Where does the real fault lie? Is it really the network or something else? Go to #10…

2. Is IP addressing correct? Proper subnetting and VLANs?

3. Conduct a visual inspection of the equipment.

4. Validate proper device power-up after a power failure.

5. RTM or Read The Manual (polite version); believe it not, the manufacturer release notes have valuable information.

6. Configuration of equipment. More often than not a change, that is either managed or not, has a cascade effect. Check settings for auto negotiation, for example.

7. Check MTU settings. This is the cause of most black holes.

8. Are the router tables correct? Is the gateway correct? show iproute is a useful tool.

9. If using a service provider/telco. Are your PE routers setup correctly and with the right MTU for WAN links?

10. Leverage network management and monitoring tools to rapidly and preemptively locate issues and to get 360^o visibility into, actionable intelligence about and complete control of your IT infrastructure.

WAN optimization should be considered as another component of an overall network management strategy. Why do I say this? Well there are several reasons, first of all, WAN optimization only provides a capability for a small subset of the network, WAN links. Certainly organizations want to use their bandwidth more efficiently and cost effectively, but if the links were not properly engineered and provisioned in the first place, WAN optimization will not help.

If anything, WAN optimization actually builds the case for more effective management of local networks connected by WAN links. Since WAN optimization only looks between edge routers, a more complete and consolidated end-to-end perspective is required and network management and monitoring provides that holistic view. No only does a network manager need to look at device status, but also the infrastructure as a whole; including devices, applications, and bandwidth. Network management and monitoring is the elemental solution that brings it all together in one place. For those organizations that are thinking about implementing WAN optimization, be sure that you have an overall network management and monitoring strategy or even better, a solution in place to get the whole picture and not just pieces of it.

Ipswitch has been working hard on a new release of their network monitoring software and it is finally here. So without any further delay, let me highlight a few of the 20 new features of Whats Up Gold v12.0 that bring 360^o visibility, actionable intelligence and complete control to network managers.

• Split Second Graphs – bring real-time information to network managers with 13 new reports that can be configured and added to any of the Top 10 or full reports. With Split Seconds Graphs network managers can simply enable Split Second Graphs on any monitor and can now have up-to-the-second data to quickly pinpoint an issue.
• InstantInfo - presents instantaneous access to utilization data on a highlighted interface. InstantInfo is enabled in WhatsUp Gold by default. Data is presented to the network manager by simply hovering the cursor over the enabled interface description. This is especially valuable when trying to locate intermittent issues without having to access reports. Similar to SSG embedded in reports, the data is transient and is not stored in the WhatsUp Gold database.
• New SNMP MIB Tools: MIB Explorer, MIB Manager and MIB Walker – MIB Explorer simplifies the chore of identifying and figuring out what MIB variables are available to be monitored directly on the device. MIB Manager enables drag and drop addition and validation of MIBs, all before you enable a monitor and then find out that the MIB is incorrect. And finally, with MIB Walker directly view the variables in a MIB to understand what parameters the MIB contains.
• Upgraded WhatsUp SQL database and Vista Support.

As a limited time offer, try WhatsUp Gold and you’ll be entered to win a Nintendo® Wii Fit & Wii Game System Console ($550 Value).

Also, if you haven’t already, please take the time to visit www.whatsupgold.com and download a v12.0 product demo. While you’re there you might notice that the site is completely new, providing in-depth information about the whole WhatsUp  product family and associated technologies.

But a common theme across the Network Monitoring spectrum is that in all cases, network downtime can cost companies. This number could run up to fifty thousand dollars an hour or more with the mix of lost productivity and revenue.

Here are five things to think about when looking at Monitoring solutions.

1. Discover: Intelligently discover your network devices.
2. Map: Elegantly build a visual topographical map of your network.
3. Monitor: Look at specific services, critical applications and assure availability.
4. Alerting: Let’s you know when you have a problem on your network?
5. Reporting: With all of the data that is being collected, present it in a legible format.

Years ago I built a web site for a specific SEO project - more on this later - for Ziff Davis Media. I relied heavily on the following web site, www.bluerobot.com, which has a lot of great examples on how to implement CSS in many web site scenarios. What’s great is that this site provides the code for you! This was my go to site when I was learning CSS positioning!

OK, the SEO project mentioned above included creating absolute positioned div tags in a relative positioned div wrapper. The point of this project was to get the most important search engine friendly content at the top of the HTML code page, while the content that you see in the browser is positioned somewhere in the middle of the page. Essentially, we wanted to “trick” search engines.

We contemplated doing the same thing for www.whatsupgold.com, but I’ve talked to at least one SEO expert that suggested this type of practice yields little to no advantage to all the trouble that it’s worth.

Comments by web developers and SEO gurus would be greatly appreciated, and look for the new site on May 6th.

I am a web master for www.whatsupgold.com, a site where we let users try, buy, and learn more about the popular network management software. Our main audience are Network Administrators, their bosses, and other IT Folks.

I want to poll other web designers and web developers on how they prefer to layout their web sites. We are in the process of launching a new site in early May that will be wider than the current site (optimized for 1024 x 768, versus the current 800 x 600), but will still include a fixed width layout. I decided to go with the fixed width for a few reasons, with the primary reason being - HTML pages are easier to manage.

What have others found as the main advantages/disadvantages of creating a site with fixed as opposed to liquid width?

Are most web geeks-masters-gods moving to a 1024 x 768 or higher resolution? In our research, we found that 99+% of our audience uses 1024 x 768 or HIGHER screen resolution, hence the switch to the higher resolution.

Therefore, I am using a fixed width of 960 pixels. I chose 960 since it is easily divisible by 3, 4, etc., and it easily fits in a browser width of 1024 with room to spare.

Your comments are most certainly welcome.

Don’t understand what all the huff in the media is about regarding the big telecom companies receiving amnesty for aiding the FBI in warrant-less wiretapping? Here are the Cliff Notes on the erosion of civil liberties in the United States of America and what it could mean to your network.

Act 1: FISA and The Patriot Act

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, requires a warrant to intercept international communications involving American citizens. In 2002, not satisfied with the prompt speed of the secret court that has granted these warrants, President Bush, under the auspices of the Patriot Act, ignored the law and ordered the NSA to intercept telephone calls and emails between people outside of and inside of the United States as long as the target was not in this country.

In 2003, the big telecoms (AT&T, Verizon and MCI) entered into contracts with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, receiving compensation for turning over records. Between 2003 and 2005, the telecoms further aided the FBI in warrant-less wiretaps by complying with at least 739 terrorist-related National Security Letters, circumventing current privacy laws. These emergency letters are self-issued subpoenas. As required by law, for an agent to issue a NSL, the inquiry must be related to an open investigation and partnered with a request for a proper subpoena. However, regarding the 739 letters, few were legitimate.

In an interview with Wired News, FBI Assistant Director John Miller stated, “The contract essentially pays for the man hours or the personnel cost for the people who have to do the work. We want dedicated people who handle our requests or do nothing else.”

In 2006, Mark Klein, a telecommunications technician with AT&T’s San Francisco branch, detailed in a statement, on behalf of a class-action suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, that the National Security Agency, had been granted access to two massive databases that contained records such as phone numbers dialed and internet addresses visited by AT&T’s subscribers. Klein further suggested that access was being granted to the NSA in other facilities in metropolises throughout the United States.

Nearly a year ago, President Bush and Congress pushed the FISA Amendment Act through, granting the intelligence community the ability to spy without court approval for one year, with the caveats listed above, and retroactively legitimizing five years of illegal activity by the Bush administration.

Act 2: Protect America Act & RESTORE Act

(To Be Continued)

In addition, the bill requires that colleges provide a P2P file-swapping alternative, which may be as simple as public link to the iTunes Music Store or as complex as a suite of network monitoring tools for administrators and file-sharing applications for students. Failure to comply with these mandates could result in the withholding federal funds fromdelinquent campuses, though there is currently no pressure to adopt new technology foran un-passed bill. If federal funding were affected, universities could venture to lose access to Pell grants, Safford and Perkins student loans, which could directly effect applications and admission rates.

While the use of peer-to-peer networks does not necessarily constitute illicit illegal activities, this kind of network monitoring could harbor many negative feelings among users. For this reason, EDUCAUSE, the foremost association of network administrators amongst college campuses, have consistently opposed these kinds of privacy invasions, as the use of VPN tunneling and encryption can easily be subverted by resourceful and persistent users.

While many believe this provision in HR4137 is nothing more than a concerted effort by lobbyists championing the broken business model of the entertainment industry, it should be noted that the Motion Picture Association of America recently revamped their numbers regarding film piracy losses from college campuses (they cut their estimate of 44 percent by two-thirds). And while it is not news that the MPAA is hardly a credible source for metrics in the creation of law, the impact of their influence in Washington DC remains to be seen. Without the opinions of industry professionals, I fear this bill could result in something far more sinister and start us down a slippery slope of profiling and restrictions on innovation and research. Academic officials should not allow legislators far removed from the complexities and needs of college campuses to determine how to run their networks. HR4137 is just another overreaching attempt by the government to pry into student’s lives and play with our equipment.

Voting history on bill HR4137 can be found here at opencongress.org. Whichever side of the fence you fall on regarding this issue, I encourage all of you to contact your Congressional representative and voice your opinion.

Many organizations have adopted this model for sales, procurement, CRM and human resources applications for example. Unlike the traditional software acquisition model, where a corporation invests in an application and is required to build the infrastructure to support the application, SaaS requires negligible upfront investment beyond user training. Application maintenance, upgrades and development are the SaaS provider’s responsibility. This is a very attractive value model for many companies. 

When SaaS web-based applications are being evaluated and purchased by a corporation, the IT and network management functions are usually not included in the planning, evaluation and decision process, as IT is perceived as a roadblock. Most frequently, this effort is driven by the business unit or department accessing the application.

This lack of cooperation can cause problems to IT and network management after the application is brought on-line. IT and network management discover the application is deployed and being accessed after the fact. Usually when users contact IT or network management to complain about application performance as the application is bandwidth intensive or existing network infrastructure is near capacity. Another factor to consider is since all SaaS based applications are connected through the Internet outside of the managed corporate network infrastructure, they are subject to any number of issues including forwarding delays, connection reliability and traffic contention. 

Business units evaluating SaaS as an option need to include IT and network management to allow for resource planning and monitoring of end-to-end SaaS specific application traffic to ensure that availability and performance expectations are achieved.