Downtime and overutilization of bandwidth are two unavoidable issues that go hand in hand for any organization. With enterprises adopting a BYOD culture, the traffic loads passing through the network can be heavy, resulting in network congestion and making the network vulnerable to cyberattacks. According to Acronis reports, about 76% of companies suffered from downtime and data loss because of cyberattacks in 2022.
To combat this, enterprises need comprehensive monitoring strategies that protect the network. When a seemingly large amount of traffic enters the network, it runs the risk of being used for unwanted tasks or for harmful reasons.
One major monitoring strategy is controlling bandwidth and shaping traffic based on business requirements. Many organizations upgrade their network as soon as the user experience or productivity declines. But in most cases, controlling the existing bandwidth so that it's only used for the right business purposes can increase the optimal operational level.On this page, we'll look at why enterprises need a bandwidth control strategy, and how NetFlow Analyzer comes into the picture to offer seamless performance.
Assuring the quantity and quality of bandwidth: Managing your bandwidth can help you regulate how your network should be accessible for applications or links (say, HTTP traffic) that serve your business purposes. In doing this, the expected quality and quantity of the network can be guaranteed for business-critical applications and critical departments.
Allowing only authentic traffic: By controlling the traffic entering according to a certain IP range or for IP addresses in your organization, you can control harmful traffic coming from suspicious sources, and protect important data.
Reducing bandwidth bottlenecks: When you allocate the most bandwidth for mission-critical applications, the bandwidth utilized for other applications, such as social media or games, will also be less. This can help prevent you from having trouble accessing important applications or from experiencing connectivity issues during peak business hours.
Less friction in the budget: With the right combination of policies and tools, you can optimize your bandwidth and increase its efficiency without spending millions. For example, you can shape traffic in such a way that the priority for bandwidth-hogging applications is low when compared to other important applications. Therefore, you won't have to upgrade whenever there's slowness caused by, say, video streaming apps.
NetFlow Analyzer is a proactive bandwidth controller that provides visibility into your network elements, such as routers and firewalls. You can monitor bandwidth usage by interfaces and applications, and check the traffic by volume, speed, and utilization.
Get in-depth visibility into wired and wireless devices' bandwidth usage and how each element is influencing the network's performance. You can drill down to view traffic graphs by volume, speed, and utilization. Besides bandwidth monitoring, user-based traffic analysis with NetFlow Analyzer is easier, since you can get information on bandwidth usage by IP address, ports, and protocols and control bandwidth that is unnecessary.
Prioritize your organization's traffic with QoS policies, access control lists, and service policies. You can improve the existing bandwidth such that it is available largely for important operations. Along with prioritization, you can assess whether the applied policies influence performance with CBQoS graphs that illustrate pre-policy and post-policy traffic.
Track which application is causing a traffic spike and halting other business operations with application-level bandwidth monitoring. With Cisco NBAR technology, you can detect applications that use dynamic ports, such as social media or high-quality streaming applications that drain your network's bandwidth.
Save your network from performance issues that come from overutilization of bandwidth. Know when a particular interface, IP group, or access point utilizes more bandwidth than the allocated quantity by setting threshold-based alerts. Configure severity and actions with different notification templates, such as Email and SMS, and by creating tickets with third-party tools like ServiceNow and Jira Service Desk.
The root cause of many network congestion issues can be traced to unavailability of bandwidth, the accessibility of the network to external users, or harmful links. Deep visibility into traffic data and blocking unnecessary traffic can help you overcome this. With NetFlow Analyzer's simple and comprehensive visibility and traffic shaping options, all these challenges can be tackled effectively. Explore more resources about NetFlow Analyzer's capabilities in bandwidth management.