With demand for faster and faster speeds, 1Gig, 2-4Gig trunks and now 10Gig are more readily available raising some key issues for network managers:-
• How much faster will my network run?
• How do these new technologies work?
• Will it work over my current infrastructure?
• How do I manage and troubleshoot links of this speed?
Here at Full Control we like to help you make sense of it all.
Cabling
Starting with the infrastructure, will your current copper or fibre cabling support 10Gig? Never assume, you will need to test, find out why with this free whitepaper from Fluke Networks. Click here to download or here to read more.
10Gig Technology & realistic Performance
For more information on how the technology works, understanding realistic performance and how to tweek to get more, click here to download the answers.
Troubleshooting, Monitoring and Management of 10Gig networks
Once it's installed you'll need tools that can help you to troubleshoot and monitor the high speed performance.
- Layer 2 – Throughput Tests
There are solutions that allow you to test your 1 and 10Gig infrastructure and get a real life performance figures for how fast your network can move data – see PathView. - Layer 2 and 3 – SNMP and NetFlow Statistics
These technologies rely on the hardware in the network to count packets and export routing cashes to get their information. SNMP and 10 Gig works fine as nothing really changes (apart from the size of the numbers!). NetFlow is a more interesting question, as in theory it works but only if you route on a 10Gig port and not all networking companies are recommending this. Some are actively saying that the 10Gig ports should be left at layer2 to operate faster. See SolarWinds, Scrutinizer from Plixer and OptiView. - Layers 4 and 5 – User and Session Information
Solutions here focus on the user activity on the network and hence need to read the packets, make records and then report. There is no need to store the whole packet therefore no need for massive storage requirements, more a need to keep up with the flows. Almost all these solutions will need enhanced NIC cards (TCP offload engines) and tuned Databases. For NAC (Network Access Control) see Forescout. - Layers 2-7 Packet Analysis and Stream to Disk
For these solutions to be effective at 10Gig there are two issues. The first is keeping up with the traffic, and this means more dedicated NIC card technology. The second is the need to store the packets at the same rate. This is referred to as “stream to disk” technology and usually means writing packets to different disks in the array so you are not waiting for the disk to finish writing when the next packet is there. See Network Instruments Observer or from the application perspective ClearSight Networks.
Call us on 0870 770 4525 or email us at info@fullcontrolnetworks.co.uk to talk through your 10Gig requirements or arrange an onsite demonstration.