Ensuring end-user satisfaction in a network-centric world

The demands on the corporate network are constantly increasing and so are performance expectations. End users assume they can use their IP phone for the conference call (with the same reliability as the PBX) and follow the presentation broadcast to their PC from Asia (with the same performance as their cable TV at home) while catching up on managing their data in the company ERP database on the other coast (with sub-second response times). All on the same network. The one you’re responsible for.

Many distributed applications are sensitive to network conditions, such as:

• Mission critical enterprise applications
• Transaction-oriented applications
• Conferencing systems
• VoIP
• IPTV
• Streaming media
• Gaming
• VPNs

End-user satisfaction in a network-centric world isn’t a natural by-product of connecting the devices. It is the result of careful planning and testing to account for all the factors that can impact application performance. Examples of these metrics are:

• Delay
• Jitter
• Packet Loss
• Packet Sequencing
• Bit Errors
• Available bandwidth

Understanding distributed application performance is also important for conducting capacity planning. Capacity planning can optimize network infrastructure, reduce costs, accommodate future growth and provide insight into how resources are used. Effective capacity planning requires analyzing end-to-end performance in order to understand which applications and hosts use which resources and how the applications perform for end users, particularly in the presence of network impairments.

Unfortunately, testing the performance of distributed applications means running the applications under various network conditions to evaluate how they respond. Spools of fiber can be used to characterize the delay associated with long-haul networks, but they can’t be used to vary delay or emulate other QoS metrics. Testing applications under realistic network conditions requires the use of Anue Network Emulators.

By running critical networked applications in a realistic emulated environment, you can establish, maintain and optimize performance and availability. Anue GEM and XGEM Network Emulators can emulate up to 64 different network profiles simultaneously at full line rate for all packet sizes, enabling you to reproduce with accuracy any network configuration and condition, including delay, jitter, errors, drop, reorder, fragmentation, duplication, buffering, flow control, and bandwidth constraints.

With Anue Network Emulators you can emulate real world scenarios in the lab–accurately, repeatedly and efficiently–in order to:

• Pro-actively plan for increased capacity requirements as the organization grows or deployed user-base increases.
• Assess the sensitivity of your distributed applications to variations in traditional QoS parameters such as bandwidth, packet loss, delay, and jitter.
• Determine how resource sharing can lead to degradation of performance due to network congestion.
• Identify the best techniques (buffering, QoS, MPLS, bandwidth shaping) to assure quality of experience for the end user.
• Find problems early, before deployment, to improve the quality of your products and services.