Although many people may perceive Network Management as an extremely complicated and diverse area of specialty, there really are only 5 questions that every Network Manager needs to think about. The main components behind every problem in Network Management, are as follows: What do I have? If you don’t know what you have how can you manage or monitor it. Most of the time in Network Management you’re trying to track down potential issues and how you’re going to resolve these issues. This is a ver...

Whether in the product business, or in services, a company’s brand image is shaped by how customers feel about interacting with the company. The impression they take away from a call to the business’s support or contact center has a lasting impact that can be either good or bad. Customer facing operations are crucial. As a business grows or undergoes other strategic changes, it may require updating its contact center operations as well. Signaling Change Arnab Mishra is Senior VP, Products and So...

PresenTense offers you an alternative to the limited functionality of synchronizing with Microsoft W32Time program. PresenTense, will not only synchronize all of the Windows PCs on the network, but also provides alert notification and a audit trail which is  not available from the Microsoft W32Time (Windows Time Service). PresenTense Client and Server software is a has Graphical User Interface (GUI) based program that can provide a primary and back-up time reference for redundancy. PresenTe...

High-stakes Monitoring Global finance moves fast. When data and transactions don't take place as smoothly or securely as expected, the company's revenues and reputation may instantly suffer, causing valued customers to seek more reliable providers. Regulatory requirements are also growing, creating a greater need for security and compliance monitoring. To mitigate risk and ensure performance, Ixia's network visibility solutions deliver the ongoing data needed to dynamically detect, avoid, and ad...

Many people believe they are best served by real people, not by voice robots. That’s the rationale behind GetHuman.com. But the economics and utility of self-service as an alternative to live agent interactions are so compelling that self-service solutions are here to stay. Providing multiple touchpoints is a huge technology investment. Technology is great, but you can’t just diligently manage the implementation process and then assume all is well with the customer service experience. Because no...

In a press release, Canadian full-service telco Telus announced it is introducing two new solutions to enable Canadian businesses leverage cloud-based technology ‘to improve how they communicate with their customers, employees and partners.’ TELUS Cloud Collaboration provides businesses with access to a full suite of unified communications services, and TELUS Cloud Contact Centre offers a fully featured contact centre solution hosted in the cloud. Both products are powered by the Cisco Hosted Co...

Security breaches are common today – from computer viruses, such as Bash Bug or Heartbleed, undermining the security of millions of websites, to credit card cyber theft experienced by big retailers. One effort to protect cardholder information is Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS), which was created in October 2008 to protect personal cardholder information whenever used in a financial transaction. PCI DSS, which is applied wherever cardholder data is stored, processed or t...

The Biggest Videoconferencing Challenge? Real-Time Performance Management Did you know that according to Enterprise Management Associates EMA™ analysts, 95 percent of organizations have VoIP on their network – and more than half have deployed videoconferencing? IP videoconferencing has strong appeal to businesses through its promise of significant cost and time savings. But how simple is the transition to video? For end users, video communications are expected to be smooth, seamless, and simple....

Canada’s Bell Media has reached its first distribution deals to deliver its new premium on-demand video streaming service to subscribers – with parent telco Bell Canada and newly merged Atlantic subsidiary Bell Aliant, alongside western Canadian incumbent telco Telus, while it says that the service, ‘codenamed Project Latte’, will be made available to ‘every TV provider in the country’ in due course. Customers will be able to access ‘thousands of hours’ of TV content including HBO’s entire off-a...

The key concept is that security isn’t something you purchase, it’s something you need to do – preferably on an everyday basis. There is no perfect security product that can stop intruders in their tracks. It needs to be a concerted process of best practices that are put into place and maintained. The first step is to put a visibility architecture in place that supports your security plan. A visibility architecture is essentially a cost-effective design that provides access to network traffic, i...

Canadian cablecos Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications both announced this week the free beta trial launch of their joint subscription video-on-demand (VoD) service ‘Shomi’. The trial service is available for existing Rogers and Shaw customers on selected tablets and other mobile devices, online, and on set-top boxes, with other platforms to follow including Xbox 360 and Chromecast. Shomi will focus on offering ‘the most popular movies and TV shows’. Thanks to TeleGeography for the arti...

A Corporate Conundrum With possession being 9/10th of the law, the bring your own device (BYOD) trend creates a conundrum for enterprises. BYOD is the policy of allowing employees to bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access company resources such as email, file servers, and databases. It is also fairly common to mix personal and professional data on single device or across multiple mobile options. BYOD is becoming increasingly prevalent in enterprises, ...

With data breaches making headlines almost daily, it is important to ensure adequate security for the data traversing your network, but what about data at rest? Packet capture appliances installed as part of an integrated performance management platform can speed troubleshooting and protect the integrity of the network. They can also be a tempting target for hackers. Raw packet content on these devices can be anything from credit card information to financial records and unregulated access to th...

The Canadian government yesterday approved the previously announced sale of Globalive Wireless (Wind Mobile) to an investor group that includes the company’s chairman, after deciding that the transaction will bolster competition in the cellular market, the Wall Street Journal reports. Federal approval came with conditions including a pledge by Wind Mobile’s new ownership to significantly invest in new spectrum and expansion of network infrastructure across Canada. It was announced in September t...

VoIP Management Overview There are any number of VoIP management solutions available in today’s market place. However, when you start to drill-­down into the capabilities of these tools they tend to focus on the performance elements of your network infrastructure and associated VoIP metrics (e.g. RTT, RTD\Latency, Packet Loss, Jitter, Moss, R-­‐Factor etc.) , assumptions are made on infrastructure and fault management being in place, so it is vitally important to assess the complete picture of y...

Canada’s largest telecoms group BCE has announced the successful completion of its privatisation of Atlantic Canadian subsidiary Bell Aliant and its integration into BCE’s nationwide Bell Canada operations. Bell Aliant’s common shares were delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) on 31 October 2014 and Bell Aliant preferred shares were delisted from the TSX on 3 November 2014. In July BCE announced it would delist Bell Aliant by acquiring the interests of public minority shareholders for a...

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) announced the industry’s only carrier-grade, high-density, 40 Gbps network monitoring switch to achieve NEBS Level 3 certification for operation in mission-critical telecommunications environments. This certification complements Ixia’s comprehensive portfolio of network monitoring switches designed to provide increased visibility into telecommunications and service provider networks, such as 4G LTE. The NEBS-certified Ixia Anue Net Tool Optimizer® solutions help network engin...

How often have you been told the network is at fault, when your gut tells you it’s an application issue? The primary challenge is determining where to look. If this sounds all too familiar, you’re in good company. In the recently released Seventh Annual State of the Network Global Study, 74% of network pros indicated their largest challenge was determining whether the problem was caused by the Network, System, or Application. And, according to IT analyst firm TRAC Research, teams spent on averag...

Ixia Network Visibility Solutions welcomes a guest blogger today, Tim O’Neill from LoveMyTool. Network engineers and managers need to think about today’s compliance requirements and the limitations of conventional data access methods. This article is focused on TAPs versus port mirroring/SPAN technology. SPAN is not all bad, but one must be aware of its limitations. As managed switches are an integral part of the infrastructure, one must be careful not to establish a failure point. Understanding...

Dr. David Hock, Senior Consultant R&D, Infosim®, discusses how Infosim® StableNet® is integrating SDN and Network Management to increase the benefits for their customers. Recently, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has become a very popular term in the area of communication networks. The paradigm shift introduced by SDN is a promising enabler for many use cases. However, it also opens up a lot of new challenges for Network Management Software Providers. Infosim® is working together with cust...