Last week, we did a guest post by Brad Whittington and received some very positive response, so we are sharing one more of his gems today. Look for us to kick off the Security Tool Vendors series next week.
In the meantime, I present to you…The Perfect Storm, Anue style!
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Guest Blogger: Brad Whittington
- Your test lab is like Lake Placid, a nice, calm spot that the most rickety boat can sail without a problem.
- The WAN is like the north Atlantic, a capricious, wild, treacherous monster that can sink the most rugged vessel.
- Your solution is the boat.
Wouldn’t you like to know if it will survive the storm before you put out to sea?
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You’re building or launching a solution of some kind. It could be an enterprise application or a website or VoIP or video conferencing. One thing is certain – it will be used across a network, either the Internet or a corporate wide-area network (WAN). What isn’t certain is if it will work as expected once it’s launched.
Too often, a test plan covers the expected traffic but not the expected network conditions. PCs with scripts are set up in a test lab or perhaps a traffic generator/analyzer is used to simulate hundreds of users hitting the server. But the test network is pristine 10/100/1000 Ethernet on CAT5. Nothing like the network it will be deployed on.
The Perfect Storm: Analogy for your WAN
The WAN does bad things to applications. It adds delay in varying amounts. It drops packets or sends them down different routes so they arrive out of order. It flips bits when nobody is looking. The perfect storm of delay and impairments is out there, just waiting to sink your project when it goes live.
Kind’a depressing, isn’t it? But you can change the story to have a happy ending. You can put your solution through the perfect storm before it ever leaves the test lab, find out what can sink it, and fix the problem before it even happens.
That’s what we do. We create the perfect network storm right in your test lab, without anybody getting hurt. How do we do it? We make a hardware-based platform that can accurately and precisely emulate real-world network conditions. Any speed, any traffic, any packet size. And we’re the only ones who can do that. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Read more about what hardware-based emulation is, and you'll see that on-chip is the only true hardware-based emulation possible for the utmost in precision and repeatability. Many software vendors claim they are hardware-based, when in fact they are software on a x86 PC-based box or similar.]
Just think; what if you could:
- Understand and predict the behavior of your solution under every possible network scenario before it goes live
- Know if it will meet service level objectives
- Identify the factors that will affect performance
- Make changes based on data instead of guesswork
- Be confident that your solution will support the performance, robustness, and scalability your organization needs in the initial roll-out
And think what your boss will say when you show him a plan that will:
- Shorten development schedules
- Reduce support costs
- Avoiding live troubleshooting and downtime
- Increase revenue and competitive advantage
He might even send you a thank you gift, like movie passes or something.
Bring the perfect storm into your lab, take the drama out of your job, and save it for the movies, where it belongs.