Will the Cisco Cius Make Desktop Video Conferencing Mainstream?

With the Cisco Cius product launch, the age of desktop video conferencing may well be emerging. The Cisco Cius is an ultra-portable, mobile collaboration business tablet that offers access to essential business applications and technologies.

The early adaptors are likely to find making video conferencing calls within an organization extremely easy and become hooked on the experience.

To read the full post, please visit the new location of our blog and start following us there. We recently revamped our website and have moved locations. We look forward to you visiting.

Routers in Space…Extending the Internet into the Universe???

Managing a network on Earth is no easy feat. How about in space? This may sound far fetched, but the concept may be becoming a reality. Internet technology is now being made available from a space-based platform.


Cisco is testing an IP router aboard a satellite in Earth orbit (22,300 miles above the Earth). The aim is to extend IP access to places that aren’t served by traditional phone and wireless networks.


As part of its Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) program, Cisco is testing the router to demonstrate to the Department of Defense (DoD) that the technology can be used to enhance military communications.


Here is a picture of the Intelsat 14 satellite with reflectors deployed for testing. Check out more pictures here.

According to Cisco, IRIS shifts much more of the intelligence to the orbiting router – with potentially dramatic benefits. The long-term goal is to route voice, data and video traffic between satellites over a single IP network in ways that are more efficient, flexible and cost effective than is possible over today's fragmented satellite communications networks.


After testing is completed in April, the IRIS project will be switched over for commercial use.

This is a very interesting development from my perspective. My company has been helping the government manage LAN, WAN, satellite and a range of networks for some time. Perhaps its time to take it to the next level….

How Much is Downtime Costing You? Find out How to Reduce Downtime by 85%...

Any guesses on how much IT downtime is costing your organization? Maybe you already know. In case you don’t - research from analyst groups suggest the cost is anywhere from $42,000 to $90,000 for every hour of unplanned downtime. The estimates (of course) vary greatly based on industry, organization size and other variables, but even if you’re on the low end of that estimate, that’s a lot of money.


In a recent white paper “Business Operations Disruption Risk: Identify, Measure, Reduce”, IDC highlights the application of five best practices that can help reduce unplanned downtime by up to 85% (derived from interviews with multiple midsize companies).


• Consistent use of management software reduces network and system downtime by 65%
• Upgrading servers/storage/network equipment reduces downtime by 50%
• Enabling high-availability failover clustering software reduces downtime by 43%
• Adopting industry best practices standards (e.g., ITIL, Cobit) across the organization reduces downtime by 13-15%
• Using virtualization software reduces server downtime by 10%


I’m guessing you’re already using some or a combination of these tactics to mitigate the risk of downtime. Most of these best practices are well known, although I did find the percentages associated with each one interesting. Do you find them to be accurate based on your experience?


Anyway…if you’re looking for guidance in any of these areas, let me know. My company specializes in IT services and network management software (free trial for 30 days).

Simple Network Management with Syslog

How do you easily track thousands of network elements and separate truly critical problems from ordinary network events? No easy task, I know. What approach do you use?

I’m a big fan of using syslog to automatically collect event messages from network devices, rather than monitor devices individually. Over the years, the syslog protocol has become an industry standard for creating, sending and collecting event messages.


A standard syslog message includes the following information:
- Facility type (OS, app or service) that originated the message
- Severity level associated with the message
- Date and time the message was sent
- Hostname or IP address of the sending server or network device
- Message text containing the event description

OS’s, applications and services continuously send these messages to centralized syslog servers. Depending on the capabilities of a particular syslog server, syslog messages can be sorted and viewed according to criteria such as message source, event severity or key words in the message text. Isn’t that convenient?

Also, the syslog server may filter syslog messages and raise alarms based on severity level. These alarms let you deal with unstable network elements first and the respective syslog messages give you the details to understand the source of the problem.

Here’s a simple table showing syslog severity levels:

Seems simple right? One challenge is that sifting through a ton of syslogs to troubleshoot a single problem can take hours. You need a way to consolidate, analyze and visualize the information to reduce system downtime and increase network performance. We have a great way for you to see your network status at a glance, check out dVUE6, a cool desktop gadget (for XP and Vista) that monitors the availability and alarm status of your five most alarmed devices in your network. For more information, and to download the gadget, follow this link.

Here is a graphical view of dVUE6

Network Disaster Preparedness Tips

With the winter season approaching, big storms bringing everything from heavy rain and lightning to snow and wind will be a constant threat to network operations. When was the last time your local IT team reviewed disaster preparedness procedures? Now is a great time to start. If any form of a disaster hits, do you or your team know your capabilities and how to react? Here are some important questions that your IT team should be able to answer and use to improve your disaster procedures:

  

1. Are you aware of your power situation?
a. What happens when a power outage occurs?
b. What is the operational status of the UPS system?
c. How long will the UPS backup systems sustain key functions?
d. What do we do if the outage is longer?

2. What if the building becomes unavailable? (fire or water damage)
a. Are the offsite backups current?
b. If a network device or server is ruined, what is the procedure to replace it?
c. Does everyone know the primary and secondary facility contacts to use should an after-hours emergency occur?

3. What if access to the building is limited? (snow, tornado warnings, etc)
a. Is VPN access updated for all employees that may need to work from home?
b. Can all of the required maintenance procedures be done remotely or skipped for several days?

4. What if the phone and/or Internet connection is lost?

5. What is the customer impact when any of these conditions occur?

Advance planning is the best approach. A good network design can minimize the impact of storm and disaster related problems. Having redundant phone and data lines from different carriers minimizes the inbound/outbound traffic risk. Using an adequate number of UPS devices mitigates all but very lengthy power outages and network routing protocols like HSRP reduce the risk of single device point of failures.

Even monitoring your network with disaster prevention in mind can be helpful in avoiding unnecessary failures. These tips are a great starting point:

1. Enable redundant polling of critical devices
2. Map out HSRP primary and secondary links
3. Know the status of the UPS systems
4. Make sure you have 24x7 access to your management system client

 If you have tips for network disaster prepardeness, please share them with us.

Announcing the release of dopplerVUE 2.0

dopplerVUE 2.0 is now available for download with exciting new features including discovering and mapping HSRP primary and secondary links, a new interface with graphics for better visibility, improved SNMP table polling and more! The 30-day trial is free, just like it was for the pre-release.

OPSCenter Screenshot

Netflow Screenshot















For those of you who missed the pre-release announcement, here’s the new feature list:

• New interface with new graphics for better readability
• Manage ANY metric on ANY device with improved SNMP table polling
• Discover and map HSRP primary and secondary links
• New WMI wizard
• Easily create personal workspaces with the new dVUE templates
• Distributed architecture to extend the number of managed devices
• Improved database and architecture for increased performance

Plus - for distributed enterprise networks dopplerVUE connects with NeuralStar to create a two-tiered, centrally monitored, fully replicated enterprise network management system that provides:

• Increased fault tolerance
• Improved performance through load balancing
• Powerful disaster recovery capabilities
• Enhanced scalability

I’d love to hear any dopplerVUE or network-related comments or questions you have!

LandWarNet 2009 in Review

I spent the week of August 17th in Ft. Lauderdale, FL attending the LandWarNet Conference. This was my first time at the conference, so I figured I would share a bit of my experience with you.

This year’s theme was, “A Global Network Enterprise Enabling Full Spectrum Operations for the Joint Warfighter”, and the exhibiting companies came from a range of technology industries including government consulting, military equipment to software.

While the show is predominately Army-focused, there were some smaller mixed groups in attendance as well. Attendance was strong, considering the state of the economy and the majority of the show sessions were full. The show floor was lively the first two days, but emptied out on day three. According to many LandWarNet veterans, the show is a magnet for hurricanes and has been closed early numerous times, so I’m not surprised people didn’t stick around the entire time.

Here are a few pictures from LandWarNet: