Top 10 Ways to Optimize Network Performance

1
Top 10 Ways to Optimize Network Performance

• Carrie Higbie, Siemon
• Global Network Applications Market Manager
• Ask the Expert , TechTarget SearchNetworking,
  SearchEnterprise Voice, SearchDataCenter
• President, BladeSystems Alliance

2
Top 10 ways to optimize performance

• Understand your performance
• What is harming optimal performance?
• Physical layer
• Routing and switching
• Applications
• Environmental concerns
• How to fix performance
• What does poor performance cost?

3
1. Bandwidth bandits Find em, slay em!

• Begin with auto-discovery
• Start at the physical layer
• Common to all systems
• Can cause the most problems
• According to LAN Magazine 70 of all downtime!
• Can be 80 of all troubleshooting costs
• Only 20 of troubleshooting time is spent fixing
  the problem
• Documentation of the physical layer may be
  required for compliance
• Absolute necessity for security reasons

4
Top offenders

• Improperly terminated cables
• Improperly terminated patch cords
• Lengths exceeded specified maximum
• Cabling was improperly or not labeled
  (troubleshooting problems)
• Electronics and closets in bad locations
  (humidity, EM, RF)
• Cables bunched to tightly causing the pairs to
  be flattened
• Cables tied to electrical conduits or run too
  close to power panels
• Cabling that did not pass testing due to various
  issues
• Closet spaghetti
• CAT 3 cables terminated to CAT 5 100M switches
• Bends exceeding bend radius
• Cables not to spec
• Racks not grounded

5
Active electronics and networking layers

• Flat networks with large address ranges
• Subnets are helpful
• Poor VLAN management
• Intruders and security breaches
• Build a historic reference
• Duplex mismatches
• Ports forced to low speeds
• Half-duplex connections
• May be electronics may be cabling!

6
2. Building in resiliency

• Load balancing and load sharing will help
  performance
• Proper subnets and/or VLANs can help
• If you build a monster, it will be a monster!
• Use the electronics to your advantage
• Price/performance ratios are key!
• Interoperability must be tested, not just stated
• Failover must be tested

7
3. Pay attention to applications

• Application sizes double every 18 months
• More capability and application bloat
• Process increasingly larger file sizes
• Shared applications and server-side processing
  can enhance or deplete resources
• QoS attributes can be set in applications
• Dont let them step on each other
• Increased demands on storage, backups and network
  resources

8
With growth comes problems

• According to Nucleus Research (2004)
• Average storage budget 2.3 Million
• Average storage capacity 115 TB
• Troubleshooting Average 14 hours per month
• Among companies with budgets gt 1B
• 85 report service degradation
• 51 said poor application performance
• 82 said problems impact employee productivity
• 79 said customer service quality suffers!
• Study from Network World (2003)
• According to Gartner, downtime will increase 200
  in Q1 2005
• 20 of all IT expenditures are for things that
  DONT work

9
Sample views - SNMP
10
Actual audit data
Note Proprietary And confidential
information removed
11
4. Examine utilization

• Snapshots do little good
• Must be done over time
• Sample period should include all normal business
  functions
• Closing out accounting
• End-of-month processes
• Payroll runs
• High-traffic periods such as high customer
  service demands
• Forget averages watch peak periods!

12
What is utilization really? What do I look for?

• Make sure that periods viewed are consistent with
  hours worked
• Averages do you little good
• For real-time applications always plan on highest
  utilization numbers
• Includes VoIP/IPT, video, etc.
• Group utilization needs by class of user, not
  department

13
What causes slow response

• Environmental conditions
• Temperature and humidity variations
• EM and RF interference
• High network traffic
• Outdated, slow PCs and NICs
• Poor installation
• Inferior patch cords
• Damaged cable due to pulling, bending
• Too many splices
• Poor cable management
• Inferior network cabling
• ACCORDING TO ESTIMATES GIVEN TO IEEE, OVER 50 OF
  ALL CAT 5E WONT PASS 5E TESTING!

14
The cost of a slow network

• Examples
• Company A
• Number of Employees 500
• Average Hourly Wage 15.00
• Hours of Productivity Lost per Year 30
• Network Slow Cost 225,000.00
• Company B
• Number of Employees 1,000
• Average Hourly Wage 18.00
• Hours of Productivity Lost per Year 52
• Network Slow Cost 936,000.00
• Company C
• Number of Employees 5,000
• Average Hourly Wage 20.00
• Hours of Productivity Lost per Year 20
• Network Slow Cost 2,000,000.00

Calculate network slow cost Cost P x W x E P
Total Number of hours lost Productivity per
year (weekly minutes/60 x 52) W Average hourly
Wage E Number of Employees on the network
15
Formulas

• Revenue per hour
• Total revenue / 2080 hour work week
• Revenue per employee per hour
• Total revenue / Number of employees / 2080
• Salary expense per hour (weighted)
• Average hourly wage 1.4 (to include overhead) /
  2080
• Salary expense plus lost revenue
• Total revenue per hour weighted salary expense
  per hour of workforce down at any given time
  (we used 15)

16
5. Performance optimization Tricks of the trade

• Audit your infrastructure cabling, electronics,
  etc.
• Use a Certified Infrastructure Auditor
• Trained to understand relationships between
  electronics and physical layer
• Omitting either one is only half an audit
• Audit your ports, not the entire switch
• Use RMON to help determine bottlenecks

17
Adding new applications

• BEWARE minimums are dangerous!
• Utilize a test bed to help understand needs
• Multiply all results by the number of end users
• Assume concurrent operations for all on the same
  shifts
• Dont forget additional loads for replication,
  redundancy and backups
• There is a fine line between not enough and too
  much
• Aim for a little too much
• Dont forget to account for growth!

18
Products to help

• Bandwidth managers
• Layer 7 products
• Application classification
• Routing based on need
• Dynamic bandwidth allocation
• Dont stop at Layer 3

Courtesy of Packeteer
19
6. Trends Know your bandwidth needs
Courtesy of Packeteer
20
Determine your need for speed

• 10G products are currently available, with new
  copper-based products expected this year
• Your network may be a combination of speeds to
  the desktop
• If a user cant fill an entire gig channel but
  you have discards at 100 Mbps, gig should be used
• Same applies to 10G
• Watch power users
• CAD/CAM/CAE
• Imaging and graphics
• Video

21
7. Predict the future The crystal ball

• Examine your past 5 years if possible
• Application changes
• Speed changes
• Hardware upgrades
• Server upgrades
• Memory upgrades
• OS upgrades

22
Trends for 05

• Gates Law revisited
• 640k ought to be enough for anybody
• -- Bill Gates, 1981

23
Application growth/bloat
24
8. Know your security challenges

• hackers!
• Spyware and malware
• Breaches
• Reporting structure
• Weaknesses
• Logging
• Compliance

25
IT management and security management

• Shift in duties
• Other spending is often derailed in lieu of
  security expenditures
• Consumes many resources
• Patch management adds overhead
• WAN links can be hindered or halted
• Utilize the best tools
• ROI based on cost avoidance
• Beware of target size!

26
9. Revisit and revise

• Any and all measures mentioned
• Quarterly health checks a must
• Downtime is not the only factor
• Slow performance is also very costly
• Put in the best if you expect the best
• The level of support you can give is equal to the
  level of support you can receive

27
10. Evaluate products What are the extras in a
top-of-the-line system?

• RD
• Standards participation
• Support on a global scale
• Tried-and-true support
• Product expediting
• Value-added services
• Warranty
• Partner as opposed to seller

28
Evaluate your vendors properly

• Check non-vendor references
• Pose some questions and validate the answers
• Training and transfer of knowledge
• Quality of training
• Certification levels
• Training for their resellers
• Back-end support knowledge bases
• Pricing is only one factor and should never be
  the deciding factor
• MTBF/MTTR every single component!
• Upgrade paths and future capabilities

29
Have a bake-off

• Invite your potential vendors in for testing
• If they state it will work make them show you
• Verify fail-over/redundancy/resiliency
• Look at the management tools
• Play with the technology
• If you find a weakness in one product, see how/if
  it is addressed in another

30
MOST IMPORTANT!

• Understand what you are getting for your money
• Front end
• Back end
• In between
• Understand market share and marketing information
• Understand where the standards are going. Todays
  investment could kill support tomorrow!

31
Thank you

• Carrie Higbie, Siemon
• Global Network Applications Market Manager
• Ask the Expert , TechTarget SearchNetworking,
  SearchEnterprise Voice, SearchDataCenter
• President, BladeSystems Alliance