8031336 managing the modern network

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Managing the Modern Network



1 ©2008, Jupitermedia Corp.

contents

2 In 2008, Your NetworkWill Know Who You Are,What You WantSean Michael Kerner

5 The New NetworkingLandscape

Sean Michael Kerner

7 Understanding a NetworkManagement Marketplacein TransitionDennis Drogseth

10 Opportunities Abound inTransitioning NetworkManagement Marketplace

Dennis Drogseth

12 Network Discovery:New Category of Essential ProductsDavid Strom

14 Network ManagementEvolves Along with Networks

Michael Pastore

16 Improving Network Efficiencyat the State of KansasMichael Pastore

Managing the Modern Network[ ]

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5 7

10 12

14 16



I

n 1949, George Orwell published his masterpiece novel1984. Even if they haven't read it, most people remember

the book's key takeaway: Big Brother is watching.

Fast forward to 2008 and Big Brother really is watching.The vehicle that makes Big Brother's omniscience pos-sible is the network.

The network: that mass of boxes, interface cards, cables,and antennae that when com-bined become a platform forevery type of human interac-tion and collaboration on theplanet Earth (and beyond).

Let's take a look at how thenetworking world of 2008 willbecome all knowing and allseeing -- a silicon- and fiber-based Big Brother, if you will.

Network SmartsA theme I heard time andagain from vendors big andsmall last year was that the

network was getting "smarter."More intelligence is beingembedded into the networklayer than ever before, with 2008 now poised to be awatershed year for the smart network.

Today, networks at a basic level are no longer "dumb"pipes that transport information. The networks of 2008will build on recent and coming innovations to becomeapplication- and user-aware -- they'll know who you are

and what you are allowed to do (or what you're prohib-ited from doing).

Intelligence in 2008 will arrive in the form of moreEthernet standards that provide increasing amounts of information about data types. Intelligence will alsocome in the form of smarter quality-of-service (QoS)and bandwidth-management offerings that intelligent-

ly provision the right band-width at the right QoS forusers and their applications.

Network SecurityThe smarter network of 2008

will rely strongly on NetworkAccess Control (NAC). WhileNAC has been a buzzword forseveral years, NAC will gomainstream in the coming yearthanks to Microsoft. A keycomponent of MicrosoftWindows Server 2008 is whatit terms Network AccessProtection, or NAP. The cor-nerstone of the technology ispre-admission control: A NAP

server will first validate thehealth of an endpoint (a useror machine, for instance)

before allowing admission to the network.

Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3, as well asWindows Vista, are both ready to serve as NAP end-points. Due to Windows' massive installed base,Microsoft's NAP will be something that enterprises canactivate out of the box to begin to secure their networks.



In 2008, Your Network Will KnowWho You Are, What You Want

By Sean Michael Kerner

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The power of access control for the smart network of 2008 cannot be understated. If hundreds of millions of Windows users are using NAP, it may end up being the

single most important security innovation since theinvention of the firewall.

Imagine: a world where insecure endpoints aren'tgranted access to do their dirty deeds. What a wonder-ful world it would be.

Network IdentityThe smart network of 2008 isn't just more secure, italso knows who you are and what you need access to.While directories such as Microsoft's Active Directoryhave been used for identity for years, they're not

enough. The 2008 network will have identity built intothe framework of the network itself.

The big push for network identity in 2008 will comefrom Cisco, with its TrustSec initiative. Instead of a userneeding to enter multiple passwords for each and everyapplication they need to visit, a TrustSec-powered net-work essentially will know who they are, what their busi-ness function is and where they're allowed to go.

From a Big Brother-auditing point of view, TrustSec,and its various competitive implementations from ven-

dors other than Cisco, also will offer a full audit trail of a user's activities at both a network level and the appli-cation level.

By embedding identity into the network layer, the net-work will have better understanding and control overwhat users are doing.

Network SpeedWith greater intelligence in the network, efficiency islikely to improve, though it still won't be enough forthe bandwidth-intensive demands that networks willface in 2008.

It's possible 2008 could well be a breakout year for 10-gigabit Ethernet, or GbE, which so far has lagged inadoption. With costs falling for 10 GbE equipment, cou-pled with rising bandwidth demands, 10 GbE will likelybe on the list of many IT admins' requisition forms.

While enterprises and data centers start full adoption of 10 GbE, standards bodies such as the IEEE will be hard

at work finalizing even faster speeds.

At some point in 2008, the 100 GbE standard is likely

to be published as a draft, providing a ten-fold increasein Ethernet connection speeds. The 100 GbE standardwill also include specifications for a 40 GbE standard,which will likely set the stage for a final showdownbetween SONET and Ethernet.

The fastest connection possible in 2007 was the venera-ble 0C-768 at 40 gigabits per second. Once 40 GbE and100 GbE come into play, it may well only be a matter of time before OC-768 loses share to the Ethernet upstarts.

IPv6: Everything Gets an Address

Orwell's Big Brother was all knowing because he waseverywhere. The networks of today aren't quite thereyet, but with IPv6, they get much closer.

The current version of the Internet Protocol (versionfour, or IPv4) relies on address space that's nearexhaustion. IPv6, with its billions upon billions of possi-ble addresses, will be its successor -- and 2008 will bethe year it finally takes off.

Why 2008? Because Uncle Sam says so.

In June, there is a Federal government mandate for theU.S. government's IT to switch to IPv6. It's a move thatwill spur tens of billions of dollars in capital and softwareupgrades. It will also force all those business that dealwith the government to strongly consider IPv6 as well.

With IPv6's massive address space, anything can havean IP address. When anything -- be it a server, a phoneor even just a refrigerator -- has an IP address, the net-work becomes pervasive.

VendorsSo who's the power behind "Big Brother"? Who is theface behind the network? Well, for 2007, it was Cisco.In 2008, Cisco is still likely to be the chief mastermindbehind the network's growing capabilities, thoughcompetitive challenges will continue to emerge.

In the core routing space, Juniper Networks will makestill more inroads, chipping away at Cisco's dominance.Expect either someone to buy Juniper this year, orJuniper to make its own purchase of a switch vendor to





bolster its bid for network dominance.

HP, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent and others will also ratchet

up their competitive offerings -- as well as the market-ing hyperbole -- as each takes on Cisco.

The bottom line, though, is that all the vendors arepushing the same goal: faster, more aware and smarternetworks.

So remember, Big Brother isn't just a literary fabricationanymore. In 2008, Big Brother is the network. I

This article was adapted from Internet.com'sInternetNews.com Web site.





L

ike two heavyweight prizefighters slugging it out in atitle match, networking colossus Cisco and challenger

Juniper Networks traded monumental announcementsin early February in their battle for the multibillion-dollarswitch market.

Make no mistake about it, the new product announce-ments from Cisco (for its NX-7000) and from Juniper (forits EX-series switches) are big news in the networkingworld. There is no question that as demand continuesto increase for Internet bandwidth, Cisco and Junipereach want to be the vendorof choice to help meet it.

To add to the stakes, it'simportant to remember thatthe networking business isone that has typically experi-enced long product cycles.As a result, the new productsfrom Cisco and Juniper maywell help to shape the faceof networking for the nextfive to ten years, or longer.

For Cisco, the NX-7000 rep-resents a new platform shift

toward a fully 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE)-optimizedswitching infrastructure. It also marks the first majornew switching platform from Cisco since the firstCatalyst debuted more than a decade ago.

For Juniper, the EX switch portfolio marks the entry of Juniper into the switch business itself. At long last,Juniper can now claim that it has an end-to-end portfo-lio -- from big routers to big switches to security andeverything in between.

In the switch market, particularly, much is up for grabs.A recent market forecast from research firm Dell'OroGroup reported that the Ethernet switch market wasworth $18.1 billion in 2007 and is expected to hit $21.8billion in 2012.

A key driver of Ethernet switch growth is the need forhigher speeds, such as 10 GbE and greater. Both ven-dors also claim that their respective platforms will beready for 100 GbE, which is the next major shift for thenetworking market. The technology is expected to

begin rolling out in late 2009or early 2010 as the standardis ratified.

While the networking spaceis rife with vendors who claimto rival Cisco, the reality isthat few have the scale tocompete successfully acrossan entire networking infra-structure play.

In my experience whenbriefing with Cisco, I'll askabout competitors (or thereis already a competitive slide

in their deck.) More often than not, Cisco will nameJuniper.

Certainly Foundry, HP Procurve, and Nortel are allviable competitors in the networking space as well. Yetnone of them to date have really challenged Cisco inthe core routing business, which is where Juniper con-tinues to gain share.

Juniper's T1600 multi-terabit router offers some real



The New Networking LandscapeBy Sean Michael Kerner

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competition to Cisco's flagship CRS-1, AKA "Huge FastRouter." The reality is that big routers need big switch-es, and I'd suspect that, typically, many networking

buyers will choose to acquire both routers and switchesfrom the same vendor.

The day that Juniper made its announcement, I alsogot some comments from Nortel, who said it wel-comed Juniper's entry into the switch business. ANortel spokesperson noted that the announcementshows that customers are demanding choices otherthan Cisco, which Juniper and Nortel can offer.

The spokesperson added that the Juniper announce-ment also validates Nortel's position that the market is

moving toward converged solutions. Yet according toNortel, enterprise data is a two-horse race -- Nortel andCisco are it, while Juniper is late out of the gate.

While Juniper is likely to disagree strongly with Nortel'sassessment, the simple reality is that Juniper is doingwell financially and is growing overall share at a rapid

rate. As a result of this and its move into the switchbusiness, along with Cisco, it's poised to be one of thetwo companies setting the pace.

Fundamentally, success in the new networking environ-ments is about end-to-end speed with a completeinfrastructure portfolio. The move toward 10GbE andmore importantly, 100GbE-capable networking infra-structure, is critical to enterprises' continued growthand stability, since they need speed to compete in theglobal economy.

Regardless of who ultimately triumphs, the high-profile,big-dollar announcements from Cisco and Juniper nodoubt will serve to expedite the move to increased

speeds. They will also raise awareness in networkinggroups around the globe that a faster world for data iscoming soon. I

This article was adapted from Internet.com'sInternetNews.com Web site.





J

ust a casual look at media headlines would suggest thatthe network marketplace is in transition. But the ques-

tion remains, a transition to what?

Probably the most compelling evidence is that manymajor network management vendors have beenacquired.

A few examples:

• Event correlation and rootcause vendor SMARTS byEMC in February of 2005.• Concord/Aprisma, a combi-nation of network performancemanagement and root causeanalysis, by CA in June of 2005.• Micromuse, a leader in serv-ice level management withstrong service provider rootsby IBM, announced inDecember of 2005.• Quest acquired MagnumTechnologies, with strengths in root cause, perform-ance and service management in May of 2007.

The drumbeat goes on. HP acquired Opsware, whichincludes strong network configuration managementcapabilities. On a less major scale, BMC acquired RealOps with strong roots in network process automation,and BMC also formed a partnership with Entuity for rootcause diagnostics; all three occurring in July of 2007

Nevertheless, there are a significant number of free-standing network management vendors, a number of

which have made acquisitions of their own. Amongthese, Fluke has acquired Crannog and Visual Networksfor application service performance management,OPNET acquired Altaworks for Web-based, transaction-driven, application management, Network Generalacquired Fidelia for a variety of service and event man-agement features, NetScout then acquired NetworkGeneral and then Quantiva for application analytics,

and NetQoS acquiredRedPoint Systems for SNMP-based polling.

All this activity suggests thenetwork management market-place is consolidating andreshaping itself at a rapid rate.

Vendors are struggling not onlyto gobble up new real estate,but perhaps even more impor-tantly, to reposition who theyare within a broader manage-ment marketplace that’s simi-larly in a rapid state of flux.

Planning & StrategiesWhat does this mean for you when it comes to plan-

ning IT management strategies that increasinglydepend on network efficiencies in reaching distributedenvironments? It at least implies that traditional siloedapproaches to buying niche tools in isolation may notbe the right strategy for very much longer. Along withall these acquisitions, in fact, the network managementmarket is deconstructing and reconstructing itself tosupport more cross-domain requirements, better ana-lytics, and more modular approaches to deploymentand functional packaging.



Understanding a Network ManagementMarketplace in Transition

By Dennis Drogseth

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Let's take a look at some of the hot spots in the newnetwork management marketplace.

Deconstructing and reconstructing: Platforms such asCA, EMC, and IBM are not just acquiring domain-spe-cific management capabilities when they acquire net-work management vendors. They are also looking forextensible and reusable parts.

For instance, CA is evaluating how far it can extendSPECTRUM’s inferencing engine as a source of rootcause diagnostics across the broader infrastructure,including servers and application services, just as EMChas extended SMARTS analytics to support storageand application flows. IBM will be leveraging

Micromuse discovery and has already integrated itsdashboard into a more cohesive service managementcapability.

Network management in support of application deliv-ery: If the network is an instrumented ocean acrosswhich all applications must flow, then it makes sense toexploit the network as a resource in monitoring appli-cation traffic and diagnosing application problems —and not only when the network is at fault.

At minimum, good network management today canaccurately isolate where a problem is occurring in largedistributed environments, often pinpointing specificservers or exposing chatty application design.

The real-time rise of real-time: Application flow man-agement across the network is increasingly being donein real-time, or near real-time. This is because unliketraditional, component-centric network performancemanagement, it doesn't require polling.

Some capabilities, such as route analytics, expose theactual path of application traffic in a fully real-time con-text. This type of visibility will become yet more impor-

tant with the advent of service-oriented architectures(SOA) that exploit distributed networked accessbeyond single data center implementations.

The rise of configuration management: In partbecause of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and itsemphasis on configuration management (meaning visi-bility into configuration and topological change) as anenabler for all management disciplines, network con-



Did you know that the growth of networking

spending is outpacing all other sectors of

IT? Abner Germanow, director of enter-

prise networking at IDC, gave his reasons why to a

standing-room only audience at Interop in May

2007.

According to Germanow's IDC data, enterprise net-

working growth was 17 percent in 2006. In contrast,

servers grew by 6 percent, packaged software grew

by 8 percent, and storage grew by 6.2 percent.

When he reported the figures to his management at

IDC, they asked him to double check since they

couldn't believe that networking could be growing

that fast because it's a mature market.

So what is propelling networking? According to

Germanow it boils down to five driving factors.

The No. 1 reason is voice and video. Germanow

noted that analysts and vendors have been talking

about voice and video for years, mostly as a future-

proofing topic. But in 2006, voice became a reality.

IDC is projecting an 11 percent growth in com-

pound annual growth rate for IP-PBXs through 2011

and a 22 percent CAGR for IP phone gear. That

growth will fuel additional demand on the network.

Video is also a massive networking bandwidth hog

and is placing large demands on IT infrastructure.

It's not just YouTube users that are driving network-

ing video demand, either. Germanow noted that

there is a solid case also for IP surveillance and

video training, and that there is a lot of excitement

around conferencing and telepresence.

The No. 2 reason for the growth of networking is the

rise of network-based businesses. Because the net-

work is the business, Germanow said, networking-

based business is all businesses and not just

Amazon, Google, and eBay. continued

Why Is Networking

Growing So Fast?By Sean Michael Kerner



figuration capabilities are becoming increasingly strate-gic for IT buyers. The multi-purpose benefits of goodconfiguration management tools to help automate

change, as well as to support more effective diagnos-tics, compliance, security, asset management, andother disciplines represents a breakthrough in both net-work management and in the industry at large.

OSS to IT: Operation support systems (OSS) as usedby classic telecommunications providers are beginningto look at IT best practices such as ITIL, and more con-scious support for application delivery services.

In parallel, IT organizations are increasingly beginningto adopt a more service provider-like posture with a

focus on measurable accountability and quality. Thesecommonalities are also causing cross currents in themarket that are allowing vendors to repurpose innova-tions targeted at one set of buyers to serve the other—typically at different levels of scalability and differentprice points.

The famous American novelist, Nathaniel West, whenconfronted with a poetry magazine called Transitionpopulated by the ill-conceived writing of pamperedstarlets was asked to comment on the quality of thecontents. His reply, arguably the single fastest uptake inthe history of American literary discourse was, "All I cansay is – 'Transition' spelled backwards is 'no it isn' art.'"

But the network management marketplace is transition-ing to something better, difficult though it is to seethrough all of its complexity. Perhaps the core toappreciating this brave new world is to focus on thedeconstruction and reconstruction along the lines of correlation and analytics, or more advanced discoverynow visible within some of the more enlightened plat-form architectural strategies.

Investing in network management is no longer just

about managing networking hardware. It's aboutinvesting in extensible technologies that may beapplied in application and service management,change and configuration management, discovery andasset management, security and compliance, just tomention a few areas. I

This article was adapted from Internet.com's CIO Update Web site.



"The way that companies succeed is the applica-

tions that they use to reach their customers,"

Germanow said.

There is also a shift toward an appliance-based

model across the networking space where both

hardware and software services co-exist in one form

factor.

Originally appliances were just for security devices

but now the trend is more wide spread. "The new

context for hardware appliances is as a simple serv-

ice delivery component," Germanow said.

The third reason for the growth of networking,

according to Germanow, is the fact that intelligent

networks are winning. With all the applications and

users coming onto the network, the need for intelli-

gent networking gear is a key enterprise require-

ment.

The fourth reason for the growth of networking is

end-point growth. Germanow noted that their has

been an explosion of network touch points, which

means that more items are connecting to the net-

work.

Virtualization is the No. 5 reason on Germanow's

list of factors driving networking growth.

"The first thing that happens is you consolidate

servers, which reduces your port count, and as a

network guy that's scary," Germanow said. "You lose

low utilization connections and move to highly uti-

lized connections where the importance of each

port is increased."

While new application demands are helping to

drive adoption, Germanow urged the audience to

remember performance.

"While the market is shifting from speeds and feeds

to features and functions, performance is still criti-

cal," he said. "Performance has to be there."

This article was adapted from Internet.com's

InternetNews.com Web site. I



T

he network operations center (NOC) is nolonger just about managing the network, it's

now a part of a broader operations and ulti-mately business service vision.

Now, to be clear, I realize this suggests one of twothings: either viewing network operations as an organi-zation used to evangelize and bring IT processes intothe mainstream; and/or lever-aging the existing capabilitiesin some NOCs to manageacross net-work/system/application inter-dependencies to integrateother more siloed IT organiza-tions from the data center.

For instance, while ITIL bestpractices typically don't beginwith the NOC, but more oftenwith the service desk and thenthe data center. In fact, thetrend can sometimes be thereverse. I would say that whilein most organizations the NOC is the last group onboard with configuration management database(CMDB) system implementations, in probably 25 per-

cent of the cases I've worked with it's the first group toimplement an early phase CMDB; typically oriented atservice impact management. And I've often heardNOC directors complain about the lack of network sup-port for many CMDB system offerings today — provingthat the NOC is ahead, not behind, market.

The reasons for this somewhat schizophrenic role vis-à-vis more holistic management shouldn't be too much

of a surprise. On the one hand, the NOC, and networkengineers in particular, are famous for being stubborn,independent, and "misunderstood." By image, at least,they are on the high end of fitting in with being classi-cally non-communicative "Dilberts."

On the other hand, many network operations organiza-tions are already established in managing across inter-

dependencies so that prob-lems can be diagnosed acrossthe network, or isolated to theapplication, or the server, orthe database. In accordancewith this, many good networkmanagement solutions arecapable of identifying applica-tion design issues, such aschatty applications, or inform-ing on server performance.

As a result, in many IT organi-zations, it's the network team,particularly the network engi-neers, who are best prepared

to coordinate troubleshooting across silos, or plan foroverarching requirements in infrastructure optimization,or manage remote locations including systems and

application access/responsiveness.

The Vendors & The MarketplaceRecent data shows that an astonishing 51 percent of purchases involving network change and configurationmanagement solutions were made in conjunction witha CMDB initiative. Standalone management purchasescame in a distant second at about 16 percent.



Opportunities Abound in TransitioningNetwork Management Marketplace

By Dennis Drogseth

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Purchases made in conjunction with systems manage-ment configuration and other software came in next at13 percent, beating out purchases of network device

hardware needing configuration tools at 12 percent.

This data is radically different from what we would haveseen five or even three years ago. It's one indicator thatplanning network management strategies is becominga much more holistic endeavor. Another striking datapoint is that 64 percent of our respondents from Q42006 indicated that their organization had done, or wasabout to make, some organizational change to facilitatebetter collaboration between the NOC and the datacenter.

Investing in management solutions is no longer justabout buying siloed tools to manage just the network.And much of the push and shove in the network man-agement market is consciously or not driven by thisvery fact. Vendors selling network management solu-tions know they have to change their business modelto support a broader set of roles; from engineering tooperations to service assurance across all domains.

Given that, and getting back to technology, I'd like towrap up with Enterprise Management Associates' rec-ommendations for assessing the value of managementinvestments for what we call "next generation serviceassurance." These requirements were evolved toaddress cross-domain requirements that impact all of IToperations, but it turns out that every one of them arerelevant to making investments on the network man-agement front.

They include:• Discovery that supports not only network, but (ideally)systems and application dependencies for performancemanagement and asset and inventory

• Analytic capabilities that can triage across network,

systems, and application issues

• Leveraging modeling technology to capture relation-ships to drive more focused approaches to automatingdiagnostics, or even reconfiguring devices

• Using application flow and route analytics in monitor-ing application services themselves

• Integrated support for configuration so that whenchanges are made to the infrastructure or its services,performance management capabilities are proactivelyaware of anything that's non-policy compliant

• Support for Web Services and SOA application com-ponentry across a distributed networked environment

• Integration between fault and performance manage-ment

• Integration between network and security manage-

ment (a No.1 priority in many shops)

• Active control to change network configurations, oroptimize bandwidth, or in some cases actually dodynamic server rebalancing in conjunction with networkperformance

• Support for lifecycle management so that under-standing, for instance, an application's robustness in ahighly distributed networked environment prior todeployment can help to ensure that promised SLAs areactually deliverable.

These are, admittedly, only some pointers targeted atevaluating solutions specifically in support of serviceassurance. Other disciplines such as capacity planning,asset management and financial planning, and configu-ration management in and of itself have their own listsof design attributes. But this list, in combination with agood plan for evolving organization and process, canserve as a good departure point for planning strategicservice management technology adoption.

These capabilities not only answer technical needs, butthey reinforce and enable the kind of cultural and

process change that many IT organizations are justbeginning to make, often with strikingly positiveresults. I

This article was adapted from Internet.com's CIO Update Web site.





E

nterprise networks have gotten so complex that it israre that any single person knows exactly what is con-

nected to them. That could become an issue, particu-larly if someone brings an infected PC or if disaster strikesand a portion of the network goes south.

The solution is a variety of network discovery tools andtechniques, some simple and cheap, others less so, tokeep up with your knowledgeof what's on the network.

A combination of securitythreats, legal complianceissues, and general trou-bleshooting complexity havemotivated a growing numberof security consulting firms tolook more closely at networkdiscovery as a bona fide prac-tice area. But before you rushout and hire someone, takestock of the skill set you havein your existing IT organization,figure out a budget for theactivity, and realize that network discovery has multipledimensions (this is security, after all) and not just a one-stop shopping experience.

Larry Dietz, research director for The Sageza Group, inUnion City, Calif., thinks there are several things to con-sider.

"First, there is a basic hardware and software inventoryof what the client thinks he has out there. If you discov-er things that the client doesn't know about, then theclient will think you are a genius. Second, you need to

find unauthorized hardware, such as servers, wirelessaccess points, and endpoints that users have broughtinto the building and running on the network. Again,whatever you can dig up is gravy."

The Basics, And BeyondThe key takeaway here is that you need to get started,and there are a wide variety of asset-tracking tools

available. Microsoft's SystemCenter, Landesk AssetManager, and the productsSymantec acquired from Altirisare all enterprise-wide toolsthat can capture a wide variety

of hardware and software typesand be useful for IT managerswho want to ensure that theyhave sufficient software licens-es for the number of users, orthat their corporate-owned PCsare accountable.

But these tools just evaluatethe basic elements, and don't

really provide information on things like what is happen-ing on the network, who is bringing in personal laptops

from home, and staffers who are connecting to roguewireless access points either by design or mistake. Forthese situations, you need one or more network analysistools to be able to see your traffic patterns.

WildPackets.com's OmniPeek and NetScout's Snifferand Visualizer product lines and are great tools fordoing this, but require a significant investment in train-ing to operate them properly.



Network Discovery: New Category of Essential Products

By David Strom

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"Ideally, you would like to gather this data once andreuse it for a variety of IT purposes," says DennisDrogseth, an analyst with Enterprise Management

Associates.

Such purposes go beyond mere discovery and couldinclude optimizing applications performance, networktroubleshooting, and handling compliance issues.Part of any solid understanding of what is happeningon your network is knowing when something haschanged, and being able to react to these changeswhen error messages pop up or users start calling withconnection problems.

A good place to learn more about this is a site called

NetPerformance.com. The site also has materials onusing the analysis tools and offers training classes aswell in their use.

Another great source of tools for network analysis isSolarWinds. The site has a product called EngineersToolset that sells at the low end of the price range fornetwork analysis tools.

The final dimension is to examine your Web presence,including looking for unauthorized but viable Web sitesthat IT doesn't know about, or potentially harmful, hos-tile or adversarial sites such as those that may be runby ex-employees or those of competitors that providelinks to questionable external sites, or blogs that men-tion privileged corporate information.

"This could lead to a whole series of services, such asvulnerability assessments, patch management, anddata forensics," says Dietz.

What tools are available? A good place to start is tolook for 30-day free licenses to try out scanning tools,along with more extensive training classes for using thepaid versions.

Another place is the self-training materials that can befound at the Open Web Application Security Project. Ithas samples for how to discover and harden Web

servers, and very detailed examples of typical Webexploits too. It is a great place to learn more aboutoverall Web security, as well as what you need to do totrack down other kinds of Web problems. And some-times just doing Google searches can be an effectivemeans of finding a particular site of a disgruntled ex-employee.

One tactic is to educate your C-level executives, bylooking for workshops or passing along articles andWeb sites of interest.

Brian Cohen, who was SPIdynamics' CEO before thecompany was acquired by HP, suggests hiring estab-lished security firms that are doing traditional vulnera-bility assessments of operating systems and networksand looking to expand their offerings into the Webpresence area. The key is having a solid grounding inInternet security, and being able to do regular scans toensure that changes to a Web site haven't opened upnew vulnerabilities.

"Business managers have lots of problems they needto investigate -- compliance, security, and just generalnetwork operations. They need to be able to analyzewhat's happening on their network and collect the evi-dence for taking action, regardless of which application(e-mail, IM, Web mail, etc.) is involved," says JohnBennett, VP of Marketing for WildPackets Inc.

As you can see, doing network discovery has many dif-ferent dimensions, tools, and cuts across a variety of skills. But as Bennett says, "IT forensics itself is simply anew category of must-have technology that is appropri-ate for any business manager today." I

This article was adapted from Internet.com's CIO

Update Web site.





I

f one thing is clear from our discussion of networks in thiseBook, it's that we ask a lot of our networks and we'll be

asking even more from them in the future. The prolifera-tion of IP-based communications and Web applicationsbegan in recent years, and it won't be easing anytime soon.

The end result is that many enterprises have vast, com-plex networks that have a life of their own. It's a hugechallenge to ensure that everycable, switch, router, and con-figuration is performing cor-rectly, and the constantchanges we make to our net-works to accommodate newapplications and businessobjectives make managing thenetwork even more difficult.

In a white paper on NetworkLifecycle Management writtenfor HP, EnterpriseManagement Associatesfound one IT environmentwhere eight out of 10 changesto the network required other changes to be made,and 10 percent of the time the result was catastrophicfailure.

The technical operation of the network is only part of the issue, however. As IT becomes more involved insupporting business objectives, it's not enough tomake sure the network hardware is operating smooth-ly. Compliance and security concerns mean the net-work operations center (NOC) is called upon to helpthe business minimize liability and reduce risk.

Networks Have a Role inCorporate ComplianceThe last decade has seen an increase in corporate com-pliance initiatives by governments, industries, and inter-national organizations, and network management is animportant part of maintaining compliance and avoidingpenalties.

The most famous compliancelaw in the United States isSarbanes-Oxley, passed in thewake of the Enron accountingscandal. SOX, as it is known,took effect in 2005. It's a broadpiece of legislation that coversalmost every aspect of financialaccounting in publicly tradedcompanies, but for networkoperators the most importantparts of the law concern thesecurity of financial data.Strong network security meas-ures are required under SOX to

ensure financial data cannot be tampered with andfinancial results altered.

Access to sensitive information is also at the heart of compliance with the Health Insurance Portability andAccountability Act (HIPAA). Any organization involvedin the electronic storage and transport of medicalrecords and healthcare information must have securitymeasures in place to protect such data.

The Patriot Act, passed soon after the Sept. 11, 2001terrorist attacks in the United States, also contains



Network Management EvolvesAlong with Networks

By Michael Pastore

Jupiterimages



requirements that affect network operators, mostly con-cerning financial transactions and the ability to monitorpayments that may be financing illegal activity. The

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed in 1999, has provisionsto protect personal financial information. Outside theUnited States, the European Union passed a data pro-tection directive in 1995.

What all of these regulations have in common (as wellas many more regulations not mentioned here) is theneed to maintain the security of data, limit and monitoraccess to the data, make the data available to thoseauthorized to receive it, and monitor events that hap-pen on the network.

For many companies, the path to complying with theseregulations includes improving efficiencies in the net-work operations center. Network management softwarethat automates manual tasks can help the NOC withcompliance because it provides a quick, efficient way toview everything that happens across the network andproactively alerts the operators when something goeswrong. By automating network monitoring and report-ing, the NOC can also more quickly respond toinquiries concerning compliance because the historicaldata is often right at the operators' fingertips.

Automating network tasks like configuration also helpseliminate human error, which helps immensely whentrying to comply with sophisticated regulations. By cre-ating a process once and automatically repeating it, it'sfar less likely something will go wrong that will affectcompliance. Automation also helps by reducing thepossibility of an inside threat because humans are lessinvolved in the day-to-day management of the networkand the data that lives on it.

Companies with less exposure to compliance initiativesare also finding ways to use network management soft-

ware to increase efficiency and get control over grow-ing networks. Revenue-generating applications, such ase-commerce sites and online self-service, require the

NOC to maximize availability and keep network per-formance at acceptable levels. Especially important asthe economy slows is getting the most from networkassets and people. Network management plays animportant part in each of these challenges.

It's rare for a modern network to be built on hardwareand software from a single vendor thanks to years of mergers and acquisitions, siloed IT operations, and aproliferation of branch offices, home offices, and a dis-persed workforce.

The network management software used to managetoday's networks needs to scale to cover the size of thenetwork, and it must also support equipment and prod-ucts from multiple vendors. Custom approaches, suchas scripts implemented by the IT staff, have little poten-tial for automation in a large, complex enterprise net-work.

So far in this eBook we've discussed how networks aregrowing and carrying even more information becauseof the growth in IP communications, and how the mar-ket for network management software is changing tohelp network operators understand what is happeningacross their networks and quickly address problems.We've looked at how corporate compliance initiativesare driving the need for network management andautomation, and how the need to make networkresources available to customers, employees, and part-ners is crucial to competing in today's economy.

We're going to wrap up this eBook with a look at howone large government organization uses the latest innetwork management software to run a more efficientoperation and increase network availability. I





F

or many organizations, growing economic uncertaintymeans increasing efficiency is a top priority. That's the

situation the State of Kansas Information Services andCommunications (ISC) organization faced when it beganlooking for ways to consolidate network management andincrease employee productivity.

Network and data center platforms at the ISC depart-ment range from IBM main-frames to Sun Solaris andMicrosoft Windows systems.About half of the servers areindustry-standard HP ProLiantDL145, DL380, and DL385servers. Approximately 22,000employees and several thou-sand contractors use the infra-structure, as well as severalthousand citizens who accessservices daily via agency Websites.

The networking group of thestate’s ISC department isresponsible for a core networkthat connects the capital of Topeka to Kansas City, and to varying degrees, the

infrastructure connecting the state’s 500 regional officesto that backbone.

Physically, it adds up to about 1,100 network devices —750 routers and 350 switches — serving 105 countiesacross 82,000 square miles.

The ISC department uses HP Network Node Manageri-series (NNMi) software to consolidate network man-

agement and better align network operations with thestate's goals.

“We’ve been using the software for many years now,but as the tool has matured, we’ve found new ways toleverage it,” said Steves. “We’ve retired three othermanagement tools, and expect to retire another threeas well.”

In addition to consolidation,NNMi simplifies network man-agement with automatedchange and fault management.The ISC networking group iscurrently using the latest ver-sion of NNMi with a new SmartPlug-in (iSPI) for Performanceadd-on module, which tracks,regulates, and automates con-figuration and softwarechanges across multi-vendornetworks to improve fault,availability, and performancemanagement. The plug-in putsmore power in the hands of first-tier network operators andgives specialists more informa-

tion when there are problems.

“We’ll also use iSPI for trending,” Steves said. “It willprovide us with the data we need to measure our per-formance against our service level agreements.”

Reducing mean-time-to-repair means improved staff efficiencies because it's less likely multiple networkoperators are working on the same trouble ticket, and



Improving Network Efficiencyat the State of Kansas

By Michael Pastore

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it also improves network availability, which translatesinto the ability of the state to deliver information andservices to those who need them. Network availability

could even be a matter of life and death.

“Our police officers use the network to perform real-time operations, like running background checks onsuspects,” Steves said. “Being able to access their datawhen they need it could potentially save someone frombeing injured or worse.”

Kansas also uses HP Network Automation software (for-merly Opsware Network Automation System) to auto-mate security compliance across its network. “We flagand dynamically correct violations across the network,”

he said. “We’d need another five full-time employeesto do this if we didn’t have the software.”

The security software’s value also became apparentduring a recent upgrade of network hardware.“Change management in a network of this size can bea daunting task,” Steves said. “But with this tool, wedon’t have to monitor configuration changes manually.The software keeps on top of it.”

Help with Everyday Network IssuesNot every organization has a network as complex or

far-flung as the State of Kansas, but that doesn't meanits network is any less important. When an internal,Web-based application or public-facing Web site criti-cal to the business is sluggish it means lost productivityor lost sales. When a report comes in from a user ormonitoring application about such a problem, HPNNMi can get to the bottom of the issue quickly.

The first step is determining exactly what is causing thesluggish response. It may be a network problem, or it

could be the user's server or application. The networkoperator selects the network end-points of the applica-tion in question and brings up the NNMi Path Health

Report. This report shows utilization, discards, errors,and availability for every node and interface in thepath.

If the utilization is within limits and there are no errorsor discards reported, the problem is likely with the serv-er or application, and the help ticket can be forwardedalong.

Another common network problem is an overburdenednetwork link caused, for example, by a router interfacefailure on another link. When performance data collec-

tion is enabled for a network device, NNMi polls it reg-ularly and compares the result to administrator-definedthresholds. An alarm alerts the operator when a thresh-old is exceeded.

There are a number of NNMi features that can help thenetwork operator diagnose a problem, including topol-ogy displays, a Chart Detail Live report, and unifiedfault and performance management. A Monthly HeatChart color-codes network loads by day of the monthand time of day. A snapshot of the Heat Chart can thenbe e-mailed to network engineering so areas of con-cern can be investigated.

In today's environment, network management soft-ware needs to do more than solve problems whenthey arise. It needs to grow and evolve with the busi-ness. It's an approach called network lifecycle man-agement and it helps network operators integratefault and performance management, availability, andchange and configuration network management toimprove NOC efficiencies and deliver better networkservice to the business. I

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