Traffic Explorer combines two previously distinct management technologies – route analytics and traffic analysis – to deliver the first integrated, real-time view of network-wide routing and traffic behavior. This groundbreaking tool helps the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, government agencies and educational institutions to operate, troubleshoot, plan and optimize their networks with unprecedented accuracy, confidence and speed. For the first time, network engineers and operators are able to view complex IP networks as integrated systems rather than collections of discrete devices and links, enabling them to maximize IT efficiency and productivity while reducing the capital and operational expenses required to maintain top network service quality.
Network-Wide Traffic Analysis
While many traffic analysis products claim to provide “network-wide” visibility, in reality they only deliver a link-by-link view of traffic statistics, and only on the small set of links that can feasibly be monitored. Without a network-wide view of traffic flows, along with an understanding of the dynamic impact of routing changes or failures on traffic, engineers are limited to manually correlating and interpreting disparate link traffic statistics, SNMP device polling data, router command-line output and log files to construct even a rough picture of network state. This greatly limits their ability to rapidly determine the root cause of problems, optimize network operation, or effectively analyze and plan for network change and growth. The result is sub-optimal application and service delivery, lower IT productivity, inefficient network asset utilization, and wasteful capital expenditures on unnecessary infrastructure upgrades.
Traffic Explorer uniquely delivers on the promise of network-wide traffic analysis, providing visibility into aggregate as well as per-application or CoS traffic flowing over every link in the network – not just directly monitored links. Traffic Explorer leverages the real-time routed topology intelligence of Route Explorer, the industry’s leading route analysis platform, to extend traditional traffic analysis beyond interface-centric reporting, providing end-to-end visibility of all traffic network-wide, but without requiring broad deployment of probes or the overhead associated with polling-based techniques. Engineers are able to interact with an “as-running” model of the network, where actual traffic flow information is dynamically overlaid on a real-time, layer-3 topology map. Traffic Explorer’s comprehensive view of network-wide traffic lets network engineers accurately and confidently perform their daily, weekly and monthly monitoring, troubleshooting, planning and maintenance activities, while delivering significant bottom-line benefits to any organization.
Integrated Traffic and Routing Monitoring
Traffic Explorer’s topology-based approach goes beyond traditional traffic analysis tools, helping engineers to quickly diagnose network problems and perform sophisticated root cause analysis. Since Traffic Explorer knows the actual routed path through the network for every flow, operators can quickly focus their attention on suspect devices or links, rapidly pinpointing the cause of poorly performing applications or services. Traffic Explorer also shows the impact of routing changes or failures, as they happen, on network-wide traffic, highlighting traffic shifts that often result in network hot spots and impact application performance.
Existing traffic analysis tools, for example, can detect sudden increases in link utilization (only on monitored links!), but are unable to determine whether the increase is due to new traffic loads on the network, or the impact of a routing change somewhere else in the network that re-routed traffic over that link. Traffic Explorer not only answers this question for any link, but also shows the impact of every routing change on network-wide traffic, including total traffic volume and the number of flows and hops affected. This information helps operators prioritize their response to those situations with the greatest impact on services. Traffic Explorer can even send alerts whenever routing changes impact specific application or CoS traffic beyond user specified thresholds, letting engineers know immediately what happened, where it happened and what traffic was affected. To further reduce Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR), Traffic Explorer provides intuitive visualization tools that let engineers replay historical events and view animations showing how individual routing changes impacted traffic flows across the entire network. No other traffic analysis tool comes close.
Modeling and Planning on the “As-Running Network”
Traffic Explorer’s extensive “what-if” analysis features deliver the industry’s most accurate network planning solution, enabling engineers to easily predict the impact of network changes, whether resolving immediate issues or performing long-term planning. Existing planning tools work off-line, using snapshots of previously captured network topology that quickly become outdated, along with manually entered traffic loads that are at best, crude approximations of actual network traffic. The inaccurate nature of these models limits their utility to long-term planning. By contrast, Traffic Explorer lets engineers model changes on the “as running” network, using the actual routed topology and traffic loads, with detailed information on application and Class of Service composition, either at the current time or from historical data.
With Traffic Explorer, engineers can simulate a broad range of network changes, such as adding or failing routers, interfaces and peerings; adding or moving prefixes; and adjusting IGP metrics, BGP policy configurations or link capacities, applications or services. Planning with an accurate, up-to-date network model lets architects see the real impact of their changes before implementing, and prevents surprises afterwards, thereby reducing time-to-deploy and avoiding unexpected problems. IT organizations can effortlessly maintain accurate network documentation, whether for regulatory compliance requirements or as part of their best practice processes.
Traffic Explorer lets engineers easily perform failure impact analyses, showing them how their network would respond in various situations. Simulating link or router failures and seeing the impact on network-wide traffic across all links is as easy as clicking on the interactive topology map. Operators can not only confirm network redundancy, but also predict link loads under different, even cascading, failure scenarios.
If backup routes are non-existent, or not as desired, Traffic Explorer lets you easily model changes to the routed network so you can verify correct operation when things fail, and ensure ongoing service delivery. Traffic Explorer’s accurate understanding of network-wide routing and traffic provides valuable insight into potential problems, helping to prevent service outages and maximize IT preparedness.
Traffic Explorer Architecture
Traffic Explorer is comprised of the following components:
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- Distributed flow recorders that collect flow records from key traffic sources in the network
- A centralized flow analyzer and modeling engine that computes traffic flows across the entire network topology utilizing routing intelligence from Route Explorer
- X-Windows, VNC and Web Browswer client software
Network-Wide Capacity Planning
Traffic Explorer gives network managers the information they need to accurately predict and plan for future capacity needs across their entire network. Engineers can view and analyze aggregate, per-application or per Class of Service (CoS) historical traffic trends including overall network volumes, per link volume or utilization anywhere in the network, even breakdowns by exit router or Nexthop address.
Going well beyond the typical link-based traffic statistics provided by other tools, Traffic Explorer lets engineers analyze and manipulate a network-wide traffic matrix, showing traffic volumes between every source/destination pair in the network. Detailed capacity projections can be accomplished by exporting the full traffic matrix to a spreadsheet, adjusting any source/destination traffic volume based on internal initiatives or forecasted loads, and then importing the updated matrix to see the impact on network-wide link utilizations.
New application or CoS deployments can be accurately “tested” on the as-running network, before they are deployed, by adding the expected traffic loads between appropriate nodes to existing traffic volumes, and viewing the combined traffic load on every link. Engineers can quickly identify potential hot spots and determine whether traffic can be re-routed around the congested links, saving unnecessary bandwidth upgrades, or whether additional capacity is required.
Peering and Transit Analysis
Optimizing transit and peering arrangements can significantly reduce service provider operating costs. Traffic Explorer arms them with the most complete set of capabilities including the ability to monitor peering or transit traffic to ensure it is within contracted ranges, as well as analyze, identify and justify new peering relationships. Whether moving traffic from paid transit to settlement-free peering, or balancing between multiple transit providers, Traffic Explorer provides the intelligence operators need to optimize their peering traffic and maximize their bottom line.
Traffic Explorer is unique in its ability to not only monitor and analyze peering and transit traffic, but also accurately plan the changes to the network that will optimize these interconnections. Traffic Explorer’s “what if” planning features let engineers understand the impact on peering or transit traffic before making any changes to the network. BGP configurations can be modified to move traffic between various existing and potential neighbor providers, showing how actual traffic loads will be affected. New peering relationships can be simulated, allowing operators to see the impact on traffic across their entire network. Since Traffic Explorer understands full end-to-end routing (both IGP and BGP), service providers can even see the impact on peering and transit traffic when making unrelated changes to the core of their network.
Network Usage Accounting
Many IT organizations monitor the usage of shared network infrastructure by internal groups for planning or charge-back purposes. Traffic Explorer allows network managers to define traffic groups that represent users, departments, locations or specific applications, and monitor network usage by each group. Aggregate or per link traffic usage by group can be viewed directly, as well as exported to external programs such as a spreadsheet or billing application.
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