With the amount of sustained security attacks launched at enterprises over the last five-plus years, network security has become an increasingly important topic—right along with how new methodologies and technologies can be used to combat the proliferation of attacks. As daily news stories document, enterprises are struggling with preventing breaches in their network security. According to Symantec, 2013 was the “Year of the Mega Breach.” The total number of breaches was 62% higher than the leve...

What is SNMP? Why should we use it? These are all common questions people ask when deciding if its the right feature for them, the answers to these questions are simple. Simple Network Management Protocol is an "internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP netowrks". Devices that typically support this solution include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks and more. Key functions Collects data about its local environment. Stores and retrieves administration inf...

Bell Canada yesterday announced that 120 more small communities across Quebec and Ontario have joined Bell Mobility’s 4G LTE mobile broadband network. Employing new 700MHz bandwidth (which first went commercial last April) and other spectrum assets, Bell is expanding LTE services to small towns, rural communities and remote locations in every region of Canada including the North. Bell earlier announced the launch of 4G LTE service in 52 small communities across all four provinces in Atlantic Can...

Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Sapling’s Time Zone Clock! Don’t know what a Time Zone Clock is or how it can help your facility? We’ve created this guide in order to introduce you to the Time Zone Clock, how it works and how it can help your facility. We split this post into a few parts so we can really dive into the Zone Clock, really get to know the ins and outs of this product. If you have any questions along the way, please leave us a comment or drop us a line on our Contact Page. Ok, let’...

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading provider of application performance and security resilience solutions, announced an update to its ControlTower distributed network visibility platform that includes support for OpenFlow enabled switches from industry leading manufacturers. ControlTower OpenFlow support has at present been interoperability tested with Arista, Dell and HP OpenFlow enabled switches. “Dell is a leading advocate for standards such as Openflow on our switching platforms to enable rich an...

Virtually all organizations today carry some level of Voice and video traffic on their data network. However, even though this technology has been available for over a decade, network engineers are still struggling to understand, predict and control how well this multimedia traffic will behave over their network. Network engineers to this day are still struggling to understand, predict and monitor how well application traffic will behave over their network, especially to remote offices or users....

With the approach of the New Year, water cooler conversation has turned to resolutions. Rather than talk about losing weight by abstaining from Grandma’s fruitcake, pass along these useful tips for ultimate network fitness in 2015. 1) Resolve to play better with the other IT teams. Share your packets Given that every IT initiative runs on the network, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the value of a packet’s payload is not limited to the network team. Virtually every IT team from application ...

In the past few years cyber-attacks have become far more predominant with data, personal records and financial information stolen and sold on the black market in a matter of days. Major companies such as E-Bay, Domino’s, Montana Health Department and even the White House have fallen victim to cyber criminals. Security Breach The most recent scandal was Anthem, one of the country largest health insurers. They recently announced that there systems had been hacked into and over 80 million customer’...

Network professionals support an increasing number of technologies and services. With adoption of SDN and network function virtualization, troubleshooting becomes more complex. Identify the right NPMD tools to detect application issues, identify root causes and perform capacity planning. Market Definition/Description Network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) enable network professionals to understand the impact of network behavior on application and infrastructure performance, and co...

Join John Olson, Senior Network Engineer for a Webinar and Live Demo on "5 modern Fault Management techniques to TEASE you!" This Webinar will provide insight into: Traditional Fault Management “must haves” Enabling StableNet® Status Measurements to reduce complexity Augmenting Fault Management with Business Process Scripts Syslog & Trap Preprocessing for large environments Enhanced Next Generation log message processing (logNG) Infosim® StableNet® Fault Management [Live Demo] A re...

In the technology era that we live in something which cannot be ignored is SaaS network management, in business everything you work off is in some shape of form part of the tech network. This may include printers, phones, routers and even electronic note pads, all of these need to be managed successfully within the business to avoid misfortunes. While looking at SaaS network management there are always going to be some pros and cons. The ease of deployment Because SaaS exists in the cloud, it er...

Optimizing NFV in Wireless Networks The promise of virtualization looms large: greater ability to fast-track services with lower costs, and, ultimately, less complexity. As virtualization evolves to encompass network functions and more, service delivery will increasingly benefit from using a common virtual compute and storage infrastructure. Ultimately, providers will realize: Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by replacing dedicated appliances with commodity hardware and software-based control...

Primus Telecommunications Canada is significantly expanding its business VoIP telephony footprint with availability in new markets of all sizes across the country, it announced in a press release. As a result, Primus has quadrupled its footprint with significant increases in regions and provinces such as Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Saskatchewan in an effort to reach more than 80% of businesses across the country with its VoIP offerings. Primus – the first telco in Canada to introduce VoIP servic...

Are carrier and toll-free services still correctly provisioned?Are cloud services working as expected?Are IVR and self-service applications up and running?Are host response times acceptable?Are speech recognition and TTS services available?Are failover/backup servers up and ready to take traffic?Did the right data pop on the agent’s desktop?Does call intelligibility degrade at certain times of day?Is your customer-facing technology performing 24 x7?Are customers having the issue-free technology ...

Quadruple-play operator Bell Canada’s total revenues grew 2.6% year-on-year to CAD4.940 billion (USD3.946 billion) in Q4 2014 on 2.2% higher service revenues, reflecting a strong increase in wireless (Bell Mobility) turnover and positive overall fixed network division growth. Product revenues grew 6.8% over Q4 2013, reflecting more wireless device upgrades and increased business data equipment sales, while quarterly Bell Media revenues declined 3.9% y-o-y. Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was up 2.2% to CA...

Fault monitoring is the process used to monitor all hardware, software, and network fault monitoring configurations for any deviations from normal operating conditions. This monitoring process typically includes major and minor changes to the expected bandwidth, performance, and utilization of the established computer environment. Some of the features in fault monitoring may include: Automated correlation of root cause events without having to code or update rules Enriches alarm information and ...

Telecoms ministry Industry Canada has published the full list of ten applicants for the upcoming auction of spectrum licences for Advanced Wireless Services (AWS-3) in the bands 1755-1780MHz and 2155-2180MHz, namely: Rogers Communications, Telus Communications, Bell Mobility, Wind Mobile, Videotron, Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises Wireless (Mobilicity), Bragg Communications (Eastlink), MTS, Saskatchewan Telecommunications (SaskTel) and TBayTel. Publication of the list of qualified bidders is...

As big data projects slam network performance, network managers must be ready for the challenges they bring. THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT BIG DATA IS A BIG DEAL TO COMPANIES TODAY The benefits of big data include greater insight into customer sentiment, improved employee productivity, smoother operations and processes, and better decision making. And it’s not just talk; a growing number of companies are taking action to implement big data projects. According to a recent survey by IDG, 49 percent of the...

When a network needs repair, modification, expansion or upgrading, the administrator Network Configuration Management refers to the network configuration management database to determine the best course of action. This database contains the locations and network addresses of all hardware devices, as well as information about the programs, versions and updates installed in network computers. A main focus to consider when discussing network configuration management is Policy checking capabilities....

Saskatchewan full-service operator SaskTel shut down its legacy Wireless Broadband Internet (WBBI) service on 30 January 2015 after successfully migrating customers to its new High Speed Fusion Internet service based on fixed-wireless TD-LTE technology, it reported on its website. In addition to completing existing WBBI customer migrations, SaskTel said it also commercially launched High Speed Fusion Internet services for new subscribers at 38 wireless tower locations around the province, and pl...