Enhancing Network Monitoring with Route Analytics

By Packet Design
Published 2009, Posted April 2009

Abstract:

IP networks are critical infrastructure, transporting application and service traffic that powers productivity and customer revenue. Yet most network operations departments have no way to monitor the IP-layer operation to ensure that the network is able to deliver traffic stably and predictably. The reason is that network monitoring has historically been based on SNMP polling of device and interface status and statistics. While certainly useful, information from individual devices and interfaces can’t convey the complex inter-working status of the devices as a whole network. As a result, operations managers are lacking critical monitoring data, particularly in complex IP network topologies that possess high levels of redundancy, and when MPLS VPNs are a major component of the WAN.

Enter route analytics, the network management technology that monitors the network’s live routing protocol control plane and uses network-wide routing intelligence to turn sparse amounts of Netflow into network-wide traffic flow visibility. By implementing route analytics, network operations managers responsible for large, complex IP networks can increase the speed and efficiency of network monitoring and reduce operations costs while increasing customer satisfaction.

This white paper reviews the causes and costs of insufficient network monitoring, explains how route analytics works and how it can be used to enhance network monitoring and troubleshooting by adding real-time visibility into routing operations as well as network-wide traffic flows, leading to operations, engineering and business costs savings.