In a University setting, wireless networking generally doesn’t need more engineering resources, but simply time. Troubleshooting often requires manual collection from disparate sources, and on top of that, the student end users often aren’t that great at reporting issues to give a fuller picture. Wireless has been a mainstay of University life for years, and students are only going to be bringing more devices onto the network.
Tim Miller sees Nyansa’s solution as a possible remedy. They use appliances distributed across the network to collect metrics on packet headers, without intercepting the payload or decrypting. Perhaps most useful for on-campus troubleshooting, the system producing amalgamated reports that can be used for help desk troubleshooting, while making the underlying data available for network engineers.
Aside from the time efficiency of the reporting, its nice to see they are able to do this without storing the actual packet data, or requiring decryption to gain the benefits.
Tim Miller comments:
It’s no secret that end users are increasingly mobile. Equally unrevealing is that troubleshooting wireless is not easy – even for seasoned network engineers. As mobile applications put more stress on the network, users increasingly experience connectivity issues that affect the business. Given the complexities involved, help desks simply resort to escalating a large number of incidents to be resolved by the (wireless) network team.
As a result, that creates a huge operational expense for large scale wireless deployments – especially at universities that are so dependent on mobility for learning spaces as well as accommodating the “residential experience” students require.
Read more at: Network Analytics That Helps You and Your Help…
