“For us, learning about a quality-of-service problem from a customer complaint is unacceptable. With NetScout, we know it first.”

VP and CIO of Grange Mutual Insurance

Performance Manager

Performance Manager

Introduction

In today’s enterprise, the reliability and performance of the IT infrastructure directly impacts business success. Networks carry time-sensitive financial transactions, lifesaving patient records, and valuable manufacturing orders. Network outages or application degradations often result in financial loss, delays in treatments, or customer dissatisfaction. Many Global 1000 manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail, energy, and healthcare organizations, as well as government agencies and service providers, have turned to NetScout to help restore network services across their enterprise.

Comprehensive Performance Management using the KPI-to-Flow-to-Packet Approach

NetScout’s nGenius Performance Management System leverages deep packet inspection technology to deliver complete visibility into real-time, operational intelligence that spans high-level key performance indicators (KPIs) and early warning signs all the way down to the actual packets. Consequently, the nGenius Performance Management System provides an easy pathway to progressively and contextually drill down from KPIs such as response time or errors, to application flow data such as utilization, conversations or top talkers, and then to packet-level details. The value of this top-down, KPI-to-Flow-to-Packet approach lies in its ability to progressively and contextually guide the troubleshooting process, reducing the time it takes to identify, analyze, diagnose and resolve network and application performance problems and restore essential business services.

The Solution is nGenius. The Result is Performance, Productivity and Control.

nGenius Performance Manager cuts through network intricacies by providing a seamless, cohesive view into the many applications and technologies that comprise your business services. NetScout simplifies your management environment by offering a highly scalable application designed specifically to cover the key components of performance management:

• application monitoring • network monitoring • capacity planning

The entire IT department can work from the same repository of real-time and historical information in order to operate more collaboratively, efficiently, and productively than ever before. From business to technical, traffic engineering to troubleshooting, network to application, executive summaries to granular details, nGenius Performance Manager has the breadth, depth, and scalability to serve all your performance management needs. The end result is an increased quality of the network services delivered to end users.

Highlights

Proactive detection

Proactively detect application performance

degradations and receive early warning of

problems before they affect end users

Reduce MTTR

Top-down, KPI-Flow-Packet workflow

streamlines troubleshooting to resolve

problems faster and more efficiently

Increase IT productivity

At-a-glance status of application services

health speeds diagnosis of the where,

what & why of a problem

Enhance collaboration

Improves collaboration by unifying all

essential performance management

functionalities in a single product

Improve business productivity

Keeps critical business processes running

at peak efficiency to reduce business risk

• application profiling & response time analysis• network convergence• troubleshooting

nGenius provides high-level and granular information on network traffic. Navigate from key performance indicators (KPIs) to application flow-based metrics down into packet details seamlessly and contextually.

Application Monitoring

Justifying network decisions in business terms

Because networked applications are the foundation of today’s business, any network decisions you make have significant implications for the entire organization and must be justified to senior managers and executives in a way they understand. Therefore, you need visibility into the many different application types running on your network, including well-known, custom, Web-based, complex (e.g., SAP/R3, Citrix), and next-generation communication applications (e.g., VoIP, video, instant messaging, peer-to-peer).

nGenius Performance Manager provides the broadest application visibility available today by identifying how applications are being used, who is using them, and how they impact total network performance. With the nGenius Solution you can immediately discover activity associated with new applications, unauthorized peer-to-peer use, or potentially harmful viruses. More importantly, when creating policies or building a case for budget increases, you can easily produce reports demonstrating application usage that provide the quantifiable proof needed to gain executive support.

“Without a doubt, NetScout provides the most complete picture for diagnosing networked application performance.”

Sr. Manager of Network Operations, US Airways

Network Monitoring

Addressing complex, global infrastructures

Gaining visibility across many disparate technologies can be overwhelming. To see all the infrastructure, connections, segments, circuits, etc., you need a comprehensive solution that recognizes information regardless of data source, time frame, geography, or underlying network technology – one that doesn’t require multiple performance management applications.

nGenius Performance Manager gives you an accurate view of how applications flow through the infrastructure, mirroring physical and logical network architecture in order to deliver information that reflects your organization. The nGenius Solution, based on CDM Architecture, was designed for extensibility. It monitors traditional topologies (Ethernet, Frame Relay, ATM), their virtual segments (VLANs, DLCIs, PVCs), and also addresses greater com-plexity, such as load-balanced configura-tions, redundant segments, and 10G, QoS, MPLS, VPNs and other encrypted services. Where nGenius Performance Manager provides options for monitoring network traffic in the core, distribution and access areas, you can effectively track and manage network services around the globe, wherever it is needed.

“The nGenius System gives us the visibility we need to serve our user base and keep mission-critical business functions running at high efficiency.”

Senior network engineer, CN

Capacity Planning

Proactively combating network congestion

Many factors affect the growth of network traffic including new initiatives, new application implementations, and even use of recreational applications like streaming radio. With the persistent use of bandwidth-hungry applications comes the increased probability of network congestion, creating a significant risk to business processes. Even a short delay can result in negative consequences. For example, a delay in trades at a brokerage firm may result in a loss of millions of dollars, or at a hospital the slow delivery of an MRI record can delay patient treatment.

With nGenius Performance Manager you can analyze growth trends, usage patterns and threshold violations in order to make informed decisions about increasing band-width, rescheduling activities, reallocating traffic, or even creating usage policies. In addition to baselines and forecasts that show you when and where bandwidth will run out, nGenius Performance Manager goes beyond basic utilization to identify which applications consume bandwidth. In short, the nGenius Solution provides the validation for capacity planning decisions.

“We know that users will always find a way to consume all the bandwidth that’s available, but with the nGenius Solution we can keep an eye on what’s happening and make sure critical applications are functioning properly.”

Director of network and infrastructure, a New England College

Reduce the effort necessary to interpret pertinent information. Quickly diagnose problems by displaying any application, metric,segment or data source side-by-side and easily turn the Workspace into an on-demand report to annotate and share with colleagues or management.

Streamlined Troubleshooting

Restoring service quickly, effectively

When the network is plagued by degradations, it is essential to learn about any issues before users start calling the help desk, and re-establish service as quickly as possible so that operations are not affected. By monitoring and alerting on key performance indicators such as responsiveness, packet loss or errors, the nGenius Solution provides early indication of problems, allowing IT to get a jumpstart on troubleshooting. NetScout’s KPI-to-Flow-to-Packet approach provides an easy pathway to contextually drill down to the required level of information needed to restore service. nGenius Performance Manager allows you to create Workspaces where you can view the exact metrics, applications, locations, users, and time frames to solve problems. These Workspaces speed troubleshooting by providing single-screen access to network-wide views and intuitive drill downs to rich, high-definition information. With minimal effort, you can move from a proactive alarm to a real-time view of all contributing applications, users, and conversations, or go directly into sub-second details and packet analysis.

“NetScout’s nGenius AFMon has dramatically sped up our troubleshoot-ing process. Troubleshooting that used to take 20 minutes to do now takes only two minutes.”

Senior Network Monitoring Tools Engineer, Johnson Controls

Application Profiling & Response Time Analysis

Understanding the end users’ experience

Every organization needs to understand the behavior of critical services and applications in order to detect and remedy developing issues so they don’t become productivity- or revenue-impacting problems. Application response time, volume and patterns of distribution all need to be examined in order to keep operations running smoothly.

nGenius Performance Manager presents concrete evidence on the successful delivery of each critical application and its impact on the infrastructure, helping you quickly address issues impacting service delivery. By evaluating application behavior in context with other network activity, you gain insight on when, where and why application response degrades, or can quantify the impact of each application on the network and on one another in order to optimize the flow of applications and services on your global network.

“SAP is the backbone of PolyOne, al-lowing us to take, make, ship, and bill orders, and if we miss any one of these steps because our network is down or congested, that is a direct, nega-tive impact on our business. NetScout helps us ensure the efficient delivery of business services 24 hours a day.”

Enterprise Network Manager, PolyOne

Network Convergence

Assessing the impact of real-time converged applications

Existing IP networks were built for delay-tolerant applications. But when coexisting on a shared data network, real-time voice becomes subject to the highs and lows of a constantly changing environment. You need intelligence to manage latency-sensitive VoIP or video in concert with the other application services and the networks they travel over.

nGenius Performance Manager monitors and reports on voice, video and data applications in converged environments, placing them in context with one another. It tracks VoIP-related protocols, (e.g., RTP, SIP, MGCP) and call quality metrics (e.g., jitter, packet loss, MOS) and displays them along side key data applications, helping you to optimize voice quality while simultaneously protecting against application degradations. With the breadth of functionality in nGenius you can achieve optimized performance of both data applications and voice services.

“We have VoIP, PACs and EMRs. We have medical devices, streaming video and new users coming on to the network, plus we have substantial growth in our wireless usage. NetScout allows us to see what traffic is coming across.”

Network Manager, Denver Health

Example metrics Questions answered

KPI Application response time, errors, packet loss, VoIP quality

“How fast is each application running?”“Is that response time acceptable?” “Are there any errors for that application or network area?” “What is the success rate?”“Is voice quality acceptable?”

Flow Conversations, utilization, top talkers, volume, worst performing, etc.

“What are the worst performing links? Applications? Servers?”“Who is using the application?”“How does this new application roll out affect bandwidth?

Packet Bounce charts, packet decodes, call trace, etc.

“What was the conversation exchange for SAP on the WAN last Tuesday?”“Why does the Web experience problems only intermittently?“How do I troubleshoot multi-tier applications?”

nGenius Performance ManagerComprehensive Performance Management

nGenius Performance Manager is a highly-scalable network and application performance management solution designed to help you minimize service disruptions due to performance problems on complex, global networks. It provides the early warnings and in-depth visibility you urgently need to evaluate and troubleshoot network and application performance issues and ultimately reduce MTTR. The real-time and historical reporting opens a window into how the business, government agency, or service provider subscriber uses the network and reveals the interrelationship of the many applications and end users across the network. Functionality within nGenius Performance Manager is applicable to multiple areas within an IT organization, allowing you to rapidly troubleshoot performance problems, proactively manage network capacity, and easily monitor network services and application performance in real time.

About NetScout SystemsNetScout Systems provides advanced network and application service assurance solutions that deliver complete visibility into real-time, packet/flow-based operational intelligence. IT operators at the world’s largest enterprises, government agencies, and service providers use the Sniffer and nGenius solutions to troubleshoot service degradations faster and more efficiently in order to reduce MTTR.

Our world-renowned Sniffer and nGenius solutions include:

n Intelligent Data Sources for high capacity, deep-packet recording and monitoring

n Analysis Software for real-time and historical network and application performance management, troubleshooting, capacity planning, and reporting

n Advanced Intelligence for early detection and in-depth analysis of complex or specialized application services

n Comprehensive, global support, consulting and training services

Corporate Headquarters 310 Littleton RoadWestford, MA 01886-4105Phone: 978-614-4000Toll Free: 888-999-5946www.netscout.com

European Headquarters NetScout Systems (UK) Ltd.100 Pall Mall London SW1Y 5HP United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)20 7321 5660

Asia/Pacific HeadquartersRoom 105, 17F/B, No. 167TunHwa N. RoadTaipei, TaiwanPhone: +886 2 2717 1999www.netscout.cn

©2008 NetScout Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. NetScout, the NetScout logo, Network General, the Network General logo, nGenius, Sniffer, InfiniStream, Business Container, Business Forensics, NetVigil and Quantiva are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc. Other brands, product names and trademarks are property of their respective owners. NetScout reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to make changes at any time in its technical information and specifications, and service and support programs.

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