NC May-Jun 2020

FEATUREREMOTE WORKING
REMOTE WORKING IN A TIME OF CRISIS
ORGANISATIONS HAVE BEEN RAPIDLY GROWING THEIR REMOTE-
ACCESS NETWORKS AND MOVING MUCH OF THEIR OPERATIONS
INTO A VIRTUAL WORLD. TOM CALDWELL, STATSEEKER CTO,
DISCUSSES HOW MANY ARE RESPONDING TO THESE NEW
CHALLENGES IN UNPRECEDENTED TIMES
Almost overnight network traffic has
completely changed due to the Covid-
19 outbreak. With a significant
increase in video conferencing, users taking
different routes to their SaaS apps from home
and traffic going over firewalls and interfaces
that it didn't before, many organisations are
scrambling to understand and manage dramatic
changes in network traffic. The bottom
line is that performance is being impacted and
staff start to complain when the network runs
slow or video quality is poor.
While different organisations might be more
prepared than others, network engineering
teams are under pressure to deliver a clear
view on the availability and performance of
their remote network connections, which are
now deemed critical to ongoing business success.
Senior management is demanding
reports which give almost real-time insight into
the quality and user experience of their remote
workers. Network managers need to rapidly
discover if corporate firewalls and VPN concentrators
can handle the additional network
load, especially from video-based services.
WHAT'S THE CHALLENGE?
NetOps teams need immediate answers to
these questions, and what we're seeing in the
market is that VPNs are obviously front of
mind. But for the Covid-19 urgency, not all
organisations have a clear view of their
IPSEC VPNs, SSL client VPNs, or other types
of VPN connections.
The problem is more than just logging into
firewalls and VPN concentrators and trying to
view the siloed network statistics. Network
managers are trying to view the end-to-end
network connectivity from remote clients,
through VPN devices, across the switch links,
then through the core to a business-critical
destination, which could be private datacentres,
SaaS clouds, ERP systems, collaboration
systems, etc. Furthermore, they need the ability
to monitor and predict key availability and
performance indicators as more and more
staff work remotely.
WHY IS THERE A PROBLEM TODAY?
Many organisations are feeling the impact as
they're simply not used to having so many
staff or students working remotely. Major corporations
may have larger teams and budgets
compared to smaller businesses or an
educational institution and therefore be more
prepared to add VPN to their network monitoring
capabilities. But others are finding it
more of a challenge.
Many NetOps teams don't usually have to
monitor everything, everywhere, rather focusing
on the key areas such as the datacentre.
But the new 'normal' means that VPNs have to
be closely monitored, almost in real-time, for
capacity planning purposes and answering
the key questions of "do I have enough
capacity?" and "do I have enough network
infrastructure to keep our remote workers productive
and collaborating?"
Existing VPN firewalls and concentrators may
not be up to the task due to throughput limitations
and license restrictions. NetOps teams in
the past have not been mandated to monitor
jitter and delay for latency-sensitive applications
like video and voice, on top of the more
usual congestion and usage levels. Some
companies and institutions are having to
install new methods of monitoring these types
of applications to obtain the required visibility,
then extract the data via SNMP polling and
visualise it in operational dashboards.
SO WHAT DOES BEST PRACTICE
LOOK LIKE?
Visibility of VPN metrics is rapidly becoming
the new standard and delivering the end-toend
network visibility that network managers
require today is critical. Displaying vital information
such as latency and utilisation across
all key VPN interfaces, including throughput
graphs showing when a pipe is full, we're
finding that customers need these intelligent
dashboards. They're helping them keep up
with their evolving networks, without having
to manually check VPN appliances or bandwidth
usage.
Offering access to new performance metrics
in this way helps them look into the future for
VPN capacity planning, plan for growth in the
new 'normal' and provide the deeper visibility
that many have been missing. NC
18 NETWORKcomputing MAY/JUNE 2020 @NCMagAndAwards
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