Today’s network is more complex than ever before. The impact that the multitude of devices, applications, and locations have on network and application performance can be startling – increased congestion, slow application response time, loss of user productivity and ultimately, chaos for you, the IT manager.
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As a result of this increased network complexity, pinpointing the root cause of these network problems like slow and unreliable performance is getting more difficult. And trying to solve them quickly to keep employees happy and get them back on task is no easy feat.
We interviewed our Support Team about how to best troubleshoot the most common network problems. They support over 4000 networks around the world, and know better than anyone how to solve issues when they come up. Here’s what they said:
Problem #1: Users Are Complaining That The Internet Is Too Slow
Perhaps the most common network problem that IT managers receive complaints about is that the Internet is too slow to use effectively. Users have little patience for a slow network that impedes their ability to get work done.
Solution: Diagnose The Problem With Real-time Network Monitoring
When the Exinda is running, take a look in real-time to identify the active applications, users, and devices. To determine what’s causing the congestion, generate a purpose-built report that shows the top apps in use for that particular time frame and how much bandwidth they are consuming. If an application, especially one that’s not business-critical is consuming a lot of your available network resources (video streaming anyone?) – set a policy to limit the amount of bandwidth allocated to that app and minimize the impact it has on your network.
Problem #2: One User Is Consuming Too Many Resources
Every network has that one user that consumes more than their fair-share of bandwidth, and often, they’re draining network resources by doing something that’s not critical to the line of business, like streaming the latest Game of Thrones episode or perusing their SnapChat feed. If bandwidth hogs aren’t contained, they can cause some serious issues for the rest of the users on the network.
Solution: Set A Policy at the User Level
Once you’ve identified the IP address of the offending user, you can integrate your organization’s Active Directory with the Exinda to put a face to that bandwidth hog and prevent them from degrading the quality of service for everyone else. From there, you can create a policy that limits the amount of bandwidth the user can waste on activity that isn’t business critical.
Problem #3 : Streaming Video is Choking My Network
Netflix, YouTube and other streaming media sources are forces to be reckoned with. Not a day goes by that our support team doesn’t have to field a call from an IT manager who needs to limit the negative impact these streaming platforms have on network performance. However, troubleshooting the streaming media problem can be a bit trickier than it sounds. Many companies now use YouTube as a marketing platform, so blocking access to it altogether is not an acceptable solution.
Solution: Create Policies By User Group
By setting a policy at the user group level, you can allow members of your company’s marketing department to upload to YouTube as needed, but restrict the rest of the company from watching things they shouldn’t be. With this kind of sophisticated traffic shaping policy in place, you can rest assured that business critical apps will be guaranteed the resources they need and you’ll receive less frantic calls from frustrated users.
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Learn more about Exinda’s Network Orchestrator to troubleshoot Network Problems.
