Why it’s important to know your network traffic
Investing in bandwidth upgrades without knowledge of traffic is like filling a bucket with a leaking hole
“We are growing and need more bandwidth.”
“We’ll need to double the bandwidth as we are over-utilizing the existing pipe.”
These are common complaints – or requirements – of CIOs and Network/IT managers. Upgrading bandwidth to meet business demands is critical. But equally important is the need to know what traffic types are flowing across the network. Are users making right use of the current bandwidth? Is a DS3 being fully utilized with production or business traffic?
Most companies do not identify their traffic flow due to lack of time, resources, or skill. Budget is commonly available to upgrade the bandwidth but not to analyze the traffic, which is rarely considered a necessity under the assumption that all traffic is legitimate traffic. As a result, it’s comparatively easy to make a business case to upgrade bandwidth than it is to invest in identifying the traffic.
There are consequences to increasing network bandwidth without fully understanding traffic flow. Investing in bandwidth upgrades without knowledge of traffic is like filling a bucket with a leaking hole –if users are not making the right use of bandwidth, further investments will likely be needed. It’s wise to identify the network traffic first before considering bandwidth upgrades to ensure bandwidth usage maps to business usage.
So what’s involved in identifying traffic and filtering out leisure traffic?
NetFlow can be used to identify the traffic flowing across the network. Traffic profiles on firewalls along with protocol/content filtering is a good idea to block the traffic at the ingress point of the WAN. Once ingress filtering points are identified correctly, it ensures bandwidth is available for the legitimate production traffic.
The sooner you get to know your traffic the better. Increasing bandwidth is fine but only if it’s for the right traffic. Network managers must address the cause of insufficient bandwidth, as opposed to addressing just the symptoms.
