Service Level Management — The Key to Intranet Performance
Negotiate better service level agreements with service providers and business units by identifying requirements and challenges. Learn to monitor your network and application performance with technologies such as RMON and VLANs. Examine the management issues involved in implementing switched-based networks, remote access services and a corporate scale IP network (Intranet).
- Service Levels: A Network Management View
- Greg Gilliom, CTO, Network General
Paul Farr, Director, Systems Technology Business Unit, Network General
- ATM Mangement Update
- John Morency, Principal, The Registry, Inc.
- Expectations for Network Performance
- Barry J. Warwick, Product Manager, Ganymede Software, Inc.
- RMON2 and Enterprise Network Traffic Management
- Debra Curtis, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Network Management Division, 3Com
- Put a Stopwatch on your Intranet
- Ben Littauer, President and Chief Technical Officer, Baranof Software
- Managing Switched Networks & VLANs
- David Passmore, President, Decisys, Inc.
- Monitoring Service Level Agreements
- Jeffery M. Kaplan, Director of Strategic Marketing, International Network Services
- Managing Frame Relay Networks
- Steven Taylor, President, Distributed Networking
Tuesday, 11:10 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Greg Gilliom, CTO
Network General
and
Paul Farr, Director, Systems Technology Business Unit
Network General
This session suggests approaches to setting and maintaining expectations via Service Level Agreements. Network instrumentation, the capabilities of RMON and RMON2, embedded MIBs and proprietary data collectors, and tradeoffs to instrument your network for varying levels of reporting and analysis cost will be covered.
The discussion addresses primary metric selection and reporting formats that show how you can present the data in a report that upper management can use and easily understand.
Key Issues Covered:
* How to define service level objectives based on Quality of Service Metrics
* End user experiences/case studies in implementing the new way of managing networks
* How to relate service level objectives back to your organization
* Practical issues in implementing service level reporting
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Tuesday, 1:30-2:20 p.m.
John Morency, Principal
The Registry, Inc.
Managing growth of today's complete internetworks is a significant undertaking. This is even more the case with leading-edge ATM networks. Most industry experts agree that the management techniques that work effectively for managing shared LANs and routers will not be the same in a pure or mixed ATM environment. Those users who have already begun ATM pilots or are seriously considering beginning one, have a number of questions regarding what they can and cannot expect concerning ATM management products and services.
Key Issues Covered:
* Practical answers to what is and is not possible regarding ATM management
* How does ATM management fit into the major vendor management platforms?
* The proper level of support that should be undertaken in order to provide effective ATM management
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Tuesday, 2:30-3:20 p.m.
Barry J. Warwick, Product Manager
Ganymede Software, Inc.
Most of the hottest innovations in networks today are based on improving performance. It is difficult for a network manager to accurately judge which technologies to use, when they are stable enough to adopt, and what impact they will have on network and application performance. Without this information, making a major network change is risky and difficult to cost-justify. This presentation looks at the tools available today that help measure the performance of networks. We will site customer experiences which have allowed managers to establish and maintain Service Level Agreements.
Key Issues Covered:
* What is the difference between RMON and RMON2?
* When should you use application-level testers?
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Wednesday, 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Debra Curtis, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Network Management Division
3Com
What is RMON2? Why is it necessary given that we already have RMON1? What advantages does it give the network manager? How will it contribute to greater understanding of network behavior?
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been working over the past two years to define RMON2, a new standard to manage end-to-end traffic and client/server applications on the network. After providing a brief background of RMON1, this session looks at the RMON2 standard, its status, its capabilities and how the network performance monitoring data provided by RMON2 will help the network manager gain a deeper understanding of the network protocols and applications running over their network. This knowledge leads to improved network performance, increased network uptime and better overall network service to end users.
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Wednesday, 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Ben Littauer, President and Chief Technical Officer
Baranof Software
As client/server network applications proliferate in your intranet, the problem of correlating application performance issues with underlying network problems becomes more critical. This session will discuss an alternative, complementary approach to component level network management — user experience application management.
By measuring the actual performance of intranet services, a network manager can get a much better handle on the health of the network and can be more responsive to user needs.
Key Issues Covered:
* How service level management differs from component management
* Two fundamental approaches to gathering service level management data
* How to use service level management alarms to provide a better real-time service to network users
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Thursday, 11:00-11:50 a.m.
David Passmore, President
Decisys, Inc.
This session addresses the challenges faced when administering, monitoring, and troubleshooting LANs based on switches instead of shared-media hubs. Addition of a distributed LAN probe or instrumentation on each LAN segment is usually impractical or too expensive. Switching also requires attention to be paid to logical networks such as VLANs.
Key Issues Covered:
* Monitoring and troubleshooting of switched LAN segments
* Applicability of the traditional manager/agent polling model to the switched LAN environment
* Issues associated with VLAN/ELAN administration and use
* Managing multilayer switched/routed multivendor environments
[Back]
Thursday, 1:30-2:20 p.m.
Jeffery M. Kaplan, Director of Strategic Marketing
International Network Services
The concept of service level agreements (SLAs) has been universally accepted, but few have successfully implemented this idea. There are two primary obstacles to success: identifying the right network performance criteria to measure, and implementing an effective measurement methodology to determine SLA compliance.
Key Issues Covered:
* Important SLA management issues
* Key network performance criteria and metrics
* Critical baseline and benchmarking measurement methods
* Advanced SLA verification tools and methodologies
* Business process improvements to maximize results
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Thursday, 2:30-3:20 p.m.
Steven Taylor, President
Distributed Networking
This session is intended as a concise overview of the major issues in managing frame relay networks. In particular, the session will highlight the emerging issues that managers need to watch closely over the coming months.
Key Issues Covered:
* Fundamentals: Pricing issues and sizing ports and CIRs
* Status of formal frame relay management specifications
* Carrier network management capabilities: Summary of results from 1997 frame relay study
* Tools for managing frame relay services
* Emerging management issues, such as NNI, SVCs, switched access, multilink, voice and managed services
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