Archive of posts: 'WAN' tag

We’ve all likely had consumer-side experiences with poor contact center performance, especially as the pandemic pushed many of us to rely more than ever on new purchasing channels. But according to market intelligence from GEP, contact centers witnessed an increase of 300% more calls than usual during the early stages of the pandemic. We’ve invited Technical Account Manager (and at...

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As we near the close of summer 2021, what digital transformations that took place in the home last fall to support remote work (and remote learning) will stick around as we kick off a new school year? According to recent data, workers that had been jockeying for their share of internet capacity at home throughout the pandemic will likely have...

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As the pandemic pushed enterprises to rethink their approach to network management and security in the face of widespread work-from-home restrictions, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) emerged as the go-to IT solution for securely linking a distributed user base. In the two years Gartner has monitored SASE in their Hype Cycle report, the technology has reached 5-20 percent adoption among...

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Businesses are exiting survival mode and diving headlong into growth mode, according to the latest analysis from Gartner, as IT spending ramps up to support a new Work-from-Anywhere reality. Worldwide, IT spending will increase by 9 percent in 2021 to $4.2 trillion as companies double down on digital transformations across the board: From tech initiatives launched to “stay afloat” during...

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SD-WAN has had a mixed reception over the years. A variety of factors have put this technology on a rockier market trajectory than some had expected. Now, with the rush to support Work- from Anywhere (WFA), it’s worthwhile to look at the strengths and weaknesses of SD-WAN and the role of end-to-end monitoring in making SD-WAN deployments better. SD-WAN Rising...

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As enterprises continue the march toward a Work From Anywhere future, VMware is the latest IT solutions provider to debut a new suite of tools aimed squarely at managing a distributed workforce. Called “Anywhere Workspace,” the new offering combines VMware’s Workspace One platform with endpoint security from VMware’s Carbon Black and SASE product lines. “Even though each of these three...

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The impact of the global pandemic has been dramatic for the enterprise space, upending financial forecasts and sending workers across the globe home in accordance with social distancing guidelines. But while the conversation regarding the workforce has largely been centered around ongoing work-from-home (WFH) initiatives, businesses are now emerging from the “rushed” phase of their transformation and into a period...

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It’s safe to say that many 2020 enterprise networking priorities have been upended as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. But once the dust settles on the impromptu, quarantine-motivated digital transformations enterprise IT recently undertook, teams will need to reexamine many of the larger-scale IT projects that were on their plate before global events took the wheel. Network World’s recently...

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Remote work in the enterprise has already been on an uptick for quite a while, as more widespread adoption of agile tech and flexible cloud and SaaS applications have made it easier for employers to engage with a far-flung workforce. A recent report shows that between 2007 and 2015, there was a 159 percent jump in remote work across sectors,...

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It’s no secret that the modern contact or call center is transforming from a facility that occupies physical real estate to an almost entirely virtual environment. LL Bean, J.C. Penny and other major retail brands, for instance, are shuttering many of their brick-and-mortar call centers and offering some employees the option to retain their positions, but in a “work-from-home” capacity....

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As more and more enterprise workflows migrate to cloud, so go the enterprise jobs, according to data culled by staffing website Indeed.com. The findings show that over the past half decade, the number of inquiries and postings for jobs related to cloud computing have been on a steady uptick, with some cloud-related salaries rising in tandem. From October 2018 to...

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A recent report from Synergy Research Group that rounds up the decade’s biggest trends in IT spending was at times both predictable and a bit of a head-scratcher. For starters, in 2010, the amount of budget that IT teams were allocating to cloud infrastructure services was practically non-existent. This isn’t altogether surprising, as the cloud as we know it today...

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In an industry where acronyms and initialisms are a dime a dozen, few tech terms are as ubiquitous in the world of enterprise networking as MPLS and SD-WAN. Sure, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and UCaaS represent buzzworthy new workflows that have changed how enterprise IT teams are managing their tech footprints. But when it comes to the underlying networks that support...

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Last week, the AppNeta team took to Las Vegas for the 2020 Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies (IOCS) Conference, where leaders and learners across the tech landscape converged to discuss where things stand today and get a sense of the future of enterprise networking. As expected, the many flavors of network “transformation” underway across the enterprise space was...

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While SD-WAN has been trending in the enterprise IT space for a few years now, there’s been little official consensus on what these solutions should encompass, let alone what defines a “best-of-breed” SD-WAN. Sure, the label SD-WAN has been marketed publicly by many providers, but in lieu of a standard that defines what exactly these tools should deliver, customers may...

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Lately, we’ve been on a roll with delivering platform updates that help successfully position our enterprise customers for a future where their WAN footprint will be more expansive and decentralized than ever before. From a slew of forward-looking DNS enhancements to completing our SOC 2 Type 2 certification, we’ve been proactive in adding features that give AppNeta customers a similarly...

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According to a recent report from Gartner, anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of enterprise app spending takes place “in the shadows” -- that is, without the knowledge of enterprise IT, and potentially in violation of network policies. Known as “Shadow IT,” the rogue use of apps that leverage WAN capacity has exploded alongside the widespread adoption of SaaS for...

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Hot on the heels of our recently introduced DNS monitoring capabilities, we’re excited to announce that we’ve enhanced AppNeta Performance Manager’s Route Visualization capabilities with BGP data, adding greater context to the insights within the platform’s Delivery dashboard. Our new Route Visualization brings you the big picture. You can see how DNS, content delivery networks, and BGP work together to...

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Just last summer, we published a post that discussed the differences between SD-WAN and WAN optimization. At the time, many people were simplifying the discussion and wondering if SD-WAN could replace aging WAN optimization solutions. When you break down the purposes of each technology, the two look more like a dynamic duo than a replacement for one another. But times...

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As part of the sales engineering team here at AppNeta, I see a lot of enterprise networks in action. We solved one interesting mystery recently. I was working with a customer on a proof of concept for our monitoring solution (AppNeta Performance Manager). On February 6, they were unable to attend a call we had set up, due to a...

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The internet and rise of mobility mean that business users and the information systems they rely on are rarely in the same place any more. Users depend on their own devices, virtualization means their desktop isn't always on their desktop, applications run remotely and even simple telecom services are delivered via the internet. In addition, API-based services, big data and...

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We always like to hear the stories of those IT early adopters for a new technology. In this story, it’s several heads of IT who’ve adopted SD-WAN. For both, their companies needed a better way to provision and manage branch office infrastructure. For one, the Bay Club Company, using SD-WAN is actually helping IT drive revenue. Provisioning new locations is...

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Who doesn’t love data these days? For business leaders, the more data you can collect, the better. Some might resist certain technologies in digital transformation, but it seems everyone can agree that big data analytics makes business life easier. Everyone except IT leaders, that is. While business leaders add ever-increasing data inputs with IoT sensors, IT teams are left to...

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No one would blame you if you can’t muster up much enthusiasm for IPv6. After all, IPv6 has been “the future” of internet protocols since its inception in 1998, without much evidence it's happening. Even though you’ve been reading about the impending downfall of IPv4 since 2007, here we are in 2017 watching adoption just barely creep above 20%. You...

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Today, there is a lot of effort toward speeding up cloud-hosted app performance through the use of solutions like SD-WAN, but not enough attention afforded to the so-called last mile of these connections. This last mile is the final network step that gets data coming into a particular office to the user requesting that data. For IT teams managing any...

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Emerging technologies are making it easier for IT teams to manage the remote offices under their control. SD-WAN deployment is growing quickly, and so are remote locations, which are increasingly a part of many distributed businesses in a whole variety of industries. At its simplest, SD-WAN pairs multiple existing networks and routes their traffic depending on network health or specific...

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Whether you’re just starting to learn the basics or you’re researching more specific benefits, you can’t go far without seeing stories about SD-WAN technology. The market for SD-WAN solutions is set to explode and IT publishers are feeding the hype. Sometimes, you might just want to sit back and ignore the hype. You have plenty of other innovative technologies to...

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Have you joined the rising crowd of IT pros claiming WAN optimization is dead in recent years? It’s the same story with all types of technology at this point. You spend 10 or 20 years relying on yesterday’s innovation, and as soon as something new comes along, the industry is ready to move on. For many, SD-WAN seems like the...

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It may have seemed for a moment there that MPLS was on its way out as SD-WAN came onto the scene and businesses with remote locations used more public internet. That’s probably not the case, though. A recent Nemertes Research survey found that about 21% of organizations are deploying some kind of SD-WAN technology. Notably, though, they aren’t getting rid...

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Talk of IT disasters can spark equal amounts of fear of them happening to us, and gratitude that the big one hasn’t happened to us yet. Network World offers some tips on what not to do when migrating to the cloud to avoid disasters—or, at the very least, grumbling users. They recommend splitting apps into two groups: those that will...

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Eight-alarm fire guts South Boston building Firefighters battled an early morning blaze on Summer Street in Boston, just two doors down from AppNeta’s Office.  The blaze was discovered around 4:29 a.m., according to the Boston Fire department’s official Twitter account. Wow… that was a little too close to home!  While we didn’t receive any physical damage to our building, we...

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This past summer, I wrote about T1s and three best practices for WAN Performance. As I mentioned in that post, T1-class WAN services are a popular way to connect branch offices to corporate data centers and the Internet for voice and other application services. While the 1.54Mbps definition of a T1 hasn’t changed over time, it’s now common to see multiple T1...

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We averaged 3Mbps throughout the day from YouTube, for a total of 14GB. It would have maxed out our 3Mbps bonded T1 service at the old office, but our Comcast business connection held up well, even as traffic peaked at over 12Mbps in the early morning hours.

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Our Systems Engineering team regularly helps customers deploy PathView Cloud to measure end user experience at remote offices. One of PathView’s unique features is the ability to measure actual achievable network capacity.  T1 class WAN services are a popular way to connect branch offices to corporate data centers and the Internet. I say ‘T1’ class because businesses are deploying WAN services that...

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Wi-Fi connections have become a traveling must-have. But it is very frustrating when the connections don’t work! While on a vacation in Europe, an AppNeta developer used PathTest, AppNeta’s free network capacity testing tool, to check the WiFi performance from common travel locations such as airports and hotels.  Follow this blog series as we track this globetrotter and the PathTest results....

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WAN optimization techniques help data flow more efficiently across the WAN with a variety of approaches: optimizing bandwidth utilization, reducing data volumes through deduplication, accelerating applications, reducing latency and more. The goal of WAN optimization is not just to increase effective bandwidth, but also to help ensure sufficient and predictable operation of QoS under the variety of conditions. WAN optimization...

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Although virtualization is a cost-effective move for many organizations, it can also be a network management nightmare if the right steps aren’t taken before and during the deployment process. Even if network performance appears healthy, the strain of supporting a VDI deployment might prove otherwise. In these cases, it is not uncommon for companies to point the finger at the...

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If I had a nickel for every time I heard “We have enough bandwidth,” I would have enough money to buy the new iPad.  While this has not gotten me the iPad, it has given me some great insight into how important knowing your available and utilized bandwidth is to assuring network performance and delivering critical business services like VoIP,...

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Service-level agreements (SLAs) are an interesting concept because unless  there is a major disruption, it is difficult to guarantee they are being met daily. How do you know your carrier is meeting the requirements you are paying for? And if you  are a carrier, how can you prove to your clients that you are delivering the service as agreed? Network...

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As a network engineer for a global financial services organization, I know I am not alone in my daily concerns about network connection speed and performance.  Our concerns are all underscored by questions such as: ‘How much bandwidth are we getting?’ ‘What are we paying our ISP monthly again?’ ‘How are my end users using our bandwidth?’ ‘Why is my...

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The benefits of virtualization are clear cut – massive financial savings in the long run. Virtualization enables organizations to use inexpensive hardware as terminals for multiple desktops which lowers costs in energy, hardware, maintenance and licensing. From a daily user’s standpoint, the convenience of accessing their personal desktops from any device effectively accelerates their time-to-value. However, the transition to virtualization...

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Many organizations underestimate the operational and business risk associated with deploying performance sensitive applications like VoIP, video conferencing, IP storage or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to remote locations. Other projects such as transitioning to a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network or integrating company networks due to a merger or acquisition can present significant performance problems for business critical services Prior...

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Santa Claus.  The Easter Bunny.  Good tasting, fat-free snack foods.  Myths?  Maybe so. But one absolute myth that is 100% untrue, and that 99% of the vendors of network performance solutions have been perpetrating for years (and whose users have been gobbling up like zero calorie french fries…) is the myth of bandwidth; more specifically, the myths of utilized and...

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My field engineering team works with customers and partners in many regions and time zones, and we often host working sessions from remote locations.  This provides great opportunities to employ our own solutions and “eat our own dog food” to monitor and troubleshoot common services we use between sites. I hosted a virtual technology workshop a few days ago  from...

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Our legacy blog entries tell the AppNeta story from the early days…Read on! Part of the support role is to reach out to new customers and provide some general product training – ‘onboarding’ as we like to call it.  It’s not every day that we uncover network issues when providing this training with a client setup but it happens often...

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I count myself lucky that I had a professor in college who took the time to brainwash us all in the ways of network troubleshooting. To this day, I still jolt awake in a cold sweat hearing his voice chant “physical layer! physical layer!”  As many of you know, the Physical layer is  the first layer of the OSI model,...

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We are often asked how our technologies very from traditional network management tools. While most other tools rely on simple network management protocol (SNMP), we utilize our own technology to perform ‘active’ network monitoring infrastructure. Around here, we compare SNMP to a car’s dashboard.  You are able to see how much gas is in the tank, what the engine RPMs...

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