Many companies are negatively impacted by streaming video, and as much as 60% of a network’s resources can be used when employees are streaming content like March Madness or the Olympics at work. I’d like to explain how you can use Exinda’s network orchestration solution to limit video streaming and control bandwidth usage during popular sporting events. Or if you prefer, allow your employees to follow their passion without hurting business application performance.

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Since I live in Canada, I watch sports games from CBC’s website. ESPN provides coverage for the United States, so I suspect most of the American World Cup viewers to similarly use ESPN’s website. Regardless of what the source is, the Exinda solution is capable of identifying any type of application or URL to help you control various streaming sources. When I watch one of the games through the CBC website from a Windows 7 PC (using Chrome as the browser) I see the following classification under Monitor –> Real Time in the Exinda UI:

Streaming1

Google Chrome uses a Silverlight client to stream the games from the cbc.ca domain. I can then go to Objects –> Applications and create a new Application Object for everything that the Exinda identifies as Silverlight, coming from cbc.ca.

Streaming2

As your employees may use a variety of browsers and operating systems, I would also include entries for QuickTime, Flash, MPEG and HTTP. In order to make those changes, find the application object you just created under Objects –> Applications and click on Edit to start adding new entries. The application objects should look similar to the following but referring to the domain in charge of streaming the games in your country:

Streaming3

Once this is done, the streaming flow will be classified with the Application Object name chosen above and you can create policies to control this traffic or prioritize it in the Optimizer Menu. In this example, I created a policy to guarantee 10% of resources up to only 20% with a relatively low priority:

Streaming4

In order to verify that the above configuration is working, click on Monitor –> Real Time and select the Show Policies option. The streaming flow should be falling under the created policy as follows:

Streaming5

You now have complete control over World Cup streaming video traffic on your network. You can now ensure employees can still watch the most beautiful sport in the world, without risking business application performance.

But Wait! There’s more…

Check out this short demo video below with steps to control video streaming on your network or contact an Exinda Solution Expert for more info. You can learn more about Exinda’s Network Orchestrator and limit video streaming on your network.