Network troubleshooting is often a frustrating process owing to the sheer amounts of data required just to get to the root of a defect with any degree of specificity and that’s only a warm-up to the main drill of fixing the problem. This is cumbersome and time-intensive; what’s worse, it’s prone to failures. At September’s Networking Field Day Event, PathSolutions presented an automation system which by and large resolves the problem that is network troubleshooting.
Resolving Network Issues the Traditional Way
Companies have more than just a couple run-ins with network issues like slowdown, database connection drop, poor call quality and sundry over the course of a calendar year. To say that this is disruptive to the workflow is putting it mildly. A sluggish network day can cost a company millions of dollars, not to mention jeopardize entire operations.
Typically running a diagnostic involves setting up the monitoring system to collate scraps of data from different areas -logging into switches and routers, checking interface, checking error counter, it’s basically a wild goose chase. Issues happening in real-time are even harder to trace. This costs businesses time and money, that are both valuable and finite.
Automated Troubleshooting with PathSolutions’ TotalView
With these encumbrances in view and rapid troubleshooting as the end-goal, PathSolutions designed a system that enhances visibility and transparency inside the network while making troubleshooting automatic and proactive. Their core goal is to proactively solve issues through gathering of information through infrastructure analysis.
Through TotalView, PathSolutions seeks to shorten the elaborate and error-prone process of manually setting up the system for monitoring the whole array of switches, gateways, firewalls, trunk ports that could potentially host the problem. In other words, what takes months to resolve can be done in just under an hour.
PathSolutions TotalView in Action
During the Network Field Day Event, Tim Titus presented TotalView in a two-parter presentation. First he gave a general overview of the solution and later a complete demo where he explained how TotalView works in the network environment starting with deployment all the way to diagnosis and troubleshooting.
TotalView attempts to revert the disconnect between reality and visibility in the NMS. It deploys on a single virtual machine in the environment from where it scans every device in the network and the infrastructures of those devices. All the information on performance, configuration, QoS, CDP, PoE is then passed through an internal heuristics engine whose job it is to analyze and identify the problem.
So, whether the problem is bad cable, duplex mismatch or a microburst link flood, the system comes up with an airtight diagnosis inside of an hour.
With the use of APM which is a built-in call simulator TotalView simulates synthetic voice traffic through Lan, Wan and end to end to detect latency, jitter, loss of package, out-of-order packet and similar problems. Based on the findings, it makes suggestions on how to improve your network environment.
Final Verdict
A stable and reliable network connection is the foundation of a sound work environment today, especially in a time when remote work is the new normal. An out-of-box troubleshooting solution that works on-point by automatically testing and resolving issues in the network is exactly what companies need.
To view PathSolutions’ Networking Field Day presentations and other event appearances, click here.
