At Riverbed, we often talk about “you can’t protect what you can’t see.” Having the ability to monitor everything that is happening in your network is the first step in improving the security, performance and reliability of your environment. But how you capture, interpret and respond to that sea of data that from your network allows you to truly take control of your operational environment. This is where real-time network analytics comes in to play.
This holds especially true for complex, overtaxed or high-security networks. Additionally, being able to capture and store network data allows historical network performance reports to be generated–a vital tool in maintaining system health, data security and optimized I/O transfer speeds between connected devices. IT teams can also quickly identify, isolate and quarantine incoming malware, viruses or worms by using real-time packet scanning to identify threats.
Network analytics help IT teams manage and secure data networks, improve security, fine-tune performance, troubleshoot network problems, predict traffic trends, perform forensic investigations for incidents and open new business opportunities in some cases.
Real-world network analytics applications
Though every enterprise network can benefit from analytics, for some industries the benefits can be manifold. For example, telcos can use network analytics to manage high volumes of user traffic in mobile communications and broadband connections. The same technology can assist mining and oil and gas companies to monitor remote IoT devices that regulate pipelines, drilling and reservoir facilities. The automotive and high-tech industries can extensively use real-time data analytics to develop self-driving vehicle networks and implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) guidance for autonomous vehicle navigation.
Streaming real-time data analytics opens new innovation opportunities across all industries based on Big Data applications, AI and ML.
How does it work?
Network analytics works by providing insights into various aspects of network performance:
- Latencies for traffic through its entire path with hop-by-hop analysis.
- Bit rates through a particular network port, broken down by application.
- Collision and packet drop rates at a port.
- Number of packets or flows from any location, device, application, or identity.
- Number of packets or flows affected by specific security policies.
- Infrastructure monitoring for SNMP, WMI, and increasingly streaming telemetry.
The visibility and insights presented by network analytics can be used for several tasks, such as spotting bottlenecks, evaluating the health of devices, root-cause analysis, issue remediation, identifying connected endpoints, and probing for potential security lapses.
Safeguarding networks and driving business growth
Network analytics offers a wide range of benefits beyond traffic analysis:
- Enhanced Security: Network analytics improves cloud resource and device security by allowing real-time scanning of data packet transmissions. Administrators can track I/O data packet resource consumption by IP address to detect anomalous changes in activity and quickly identify intruders, malware, and infected devices. It also speeds up the detection of security threats, preventing hacking attacks from spreading deep into the corporate infrastructure. Network analytics can not only track the path of a compromise through the network in real time but also can be used to retrospectively investigate once a new attack vector has been identified and understood.
- SNMP and WMI Filtering: Data can be used to diagnose network device problems and reduce remediation time.
- Real-time Analytics: Integration with AI and machine learning provides real-time and historical insights into network data, enabling tailored operations.
- Streamlined Business Processes: Analytics optimizes enterprise-wide IT operations, security, and efficiency while streamlining business management.
- Performance Monitoring: Administrators can monitor performance, including historical usage patterns that help predict future data center needs.
- Track KPIs: Network monitoring tools can analyze KPIs and present them to administrators, simplifying complex cloud network reporting and alert processes. IT teams can track specific KPIs for their specific industry application.
At Riverbed, we have been deploying network analytics solutions for over 15 years. As networks have become more complex and security requirements have increased, we need an automated way to correlate, interpret, analyze and respond. Or, to put it another way, we need more “IQ” out of Network Analytics solutions. That’s why we have more recently built out the Riverbed IQ to address the needs of todays’ complex and high speed environments.
Visit Riverbed to learn more about how Riverbed IQ can help you transform data into actionable insights to empower digital experiences.