Out of 100 network engineers and IT directors surveyed by WildPackets, 92 percent have 10G networks or higher, with network visibility and network forensics being the biggest challenge at this speed.
The survey showed that less than half of the companies surveyed are implementing network forensics, which is the practice of capturing, recording and analyzing network events to discover the source of a security attack or a network or application problem. Yet, 85 percent of those surveyed stated that network forensics is essential at 10G.
The key challenges that network engineers face with network forensics are limited disk space (51 percent stated this was an issue), limited real-time statistics (47 percent stated it was an issue) and cost (56 percent stated this was their biggest challenge). In addition 50 percent of respondents stated they needed faster forensics search times with their current system.
In addition to these challenges, users stated they needed the following features with 10G network monitoring and analysis:
- 72 percent wanted more real-time statistics
- 33 percent of those surveyed stated that they needed VoIP analysis at 10G
- 51 percent stated they needed aggregation of network analysis across network segments
Security attacks become even more of a challenge at 10G and 21 percent of respondents said that limitations of security monitoring solutions was a major problem. The most common security related anomalies used with a network analysis solution are Denial of Service and Intrusion Detection.
"With the rise of virtualization and an exponential increase in voice and video data traversing the network, it should come as no surprise that more and more companies are implementing higher capacity, higher bandwidth 10G networks," explained Tim McCreery, CEO at WildPackets. "As companies implement 10G, they need network performance management techniques and tools that keep pace with these faster networks. Using legacy 1G tools, customers are unable to get the visibility they need to ensure that network performance is sustained – as the survey shows. More importantly, though, is the lack of utilization of network forensics tools in these high-speed network environments, which will hinder the ability to quickly resolve application and network issues."
Related Links:
