Industry statistics reveal that 3 out of 4 network outages are caused by human changes to the network rather than hardware failure or circuit outages. In other words, a perfect monitoring system will at best only catch 25% of network issues. So what can we do?
Although most large enterprises have both solutions in place today, the problem is still largely unsolved.
There are countless ways network changes can go wrong. The sheer complexity of the various tasks involved demand an Integrated Solution that can combine human wisdom, computational intelligence and automation tools together. This novel idea is the inspiration behind NetBrain’s Map-Driven Network Design environment.
There are three key-components in NetBrain’s integrated solution:
- Design Planning With A Map-Driven Collaborative Environment
NetBrain automates the creation of design documentation, from Visio network diagrams to comprehensive design documents in Word. As a result, it can greatly increase the efficiency of the human review process, which is by far the most effective way to increase design quality and reduce outages.
- Benchmark Network Before and After Implementation
One of the difficulties in preventing outages from network changes is the inability to see the full effect of the change until it is too late. Before implementing the proposed changes, a pre-change network benchmark is taken through NetBrain’s one-click benchmarking capabilities. Unlike simple snapshots, NetBrain’s benchmarks will record multiple parameters of the network, including, but not limited to, configuration, routing and topology data.
Benchmarking after implementation is just as important as before changes. It will allow for the next step in comparative analysis of the network to determine the effectiveness of the changes. The easy one-click benchmarking from the map gives a constant historical record to refer back to for future design plans and troubleshooting needs.
- Verify Impacts After Implementation Automatically
Every new modification will induce supplementary changes due to the ripple effect inherent with networks. NetBrain will automatically verify the new network through comparative analysis to automatically discover changes in routing, configuration, topology, and even traffic paths right after the network changes are made. Instead of waiting for next Monday’s outages to notify you of missing routes and change errors, you can see all the changes computed in real-time, allowing you to catch the problem or missing routes during the change window – before the outages happen. NetBrain will leave no stone unturned, so you can be sure that your network will run smoothly.
Inside NetBrain, everything starts and ends with a
SmartMap. SmartMaps are the 3rd generation network diagramming technology that allows engineers to create
dynamic network diagrams on-the-fly, by leveraging an underlying data model containing
Smart Objects.
To understand the map-driven network engineering environment, take a look at the following examples:
Objective: Redesign the routing between two POPs (Point of Presence) so that traffic between them goes through the core network, instead of the client network.
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