Cisco Smartnet

The key Tool Of Productive IT Professionals
WAN emulation is known as a technique that the properties of an existing, designed and/or non-ideal network are simulated to be able to assess efficiency, forecast the effect of change, or otherwise enhance technologies decision-making.

WAN emulation may be accomplished by introducing a tool on the LAN that alters packet flow in a way that imitates the actual behavior of application traffic in the environment being emulated. This product may be whether general-purpose computer running software to execute the network emulation or even a dedicated emulation device. The device incorporates a variety of network attributes into its emulation model - such as the round-trip time across the network (latency), the quantity of accessible bandwidth, a certain degree of packet loss, replication of packets, reordering packets, and/or the degree of network jitter. Desktop computer PCs might be connected to the emulated environment, to ensure that users can go through the efficiency and behavior of applications in that environment first-hand. Similarly, phones can be attached to the emulated environment so that users can straight evaluate VoIP call quality for their own reasons.

Emulation is different from simulation for the reason that a network emulator appears to be a network; end-systems for example desktops is often attached to the emulator and can become if they're mounted on a network. Network simulators are typically programs which run on just one computer, take an abstract explanation from the network traffic (for example a flow arrival procedure) and yield performance statistics (such as buffer occupancy like a function of time).

A WAN emulation emulates the network which connects end-systems, not the end-systems themselves. Systems which emulate the end-systems are known as traffic generators.

Video Conferencing in the beginning
Video conferencing was initially introduced in 1964 at the New York world fair, when AT&T presented the earth's first picture phone. This allowed two people to communicate and simultaneously see one another on the phone screens. In the beginning stages of video conferencing, T1, ATM and ISDN lines were mostly used but were only common for room-based video conferencing.

Initially these lines were quite expensive and operational difficulties such as bad pictures and sounds caused this idea not to go as far as it could. As the web became more a part of people's everyday lives video conferencing started being conducted differently with computer-to-computer networking.

The TCP/IP connections from the Internet were discovered to be less costly and was able to hold more info. By 2003, high-speed Internet access became available widespread in a very minimal cost, as well as the price of web cameras and display technology. An individual is now do a video conference in High-Definition which was first introduced in 2005 and also the fastest ever. The image quality is much more clear and crisp also, the audio is synchronized providing a higher quality and much more effective and enjoyable experience.

A conference in High-Definition gives a wider presentation angle which enables more conference participants to be on camera and fully engaged in what's going on. Having one of these life like experience has completely changed the outlook of those conferences. Many would mock the technology and doubted that it would be turned into a viable form of communication. It was because of the low quality of picture and the delay of sound. For several years it seemed that there'd be no comparison between video calls and telephone calls as the easy information transfer weren't too dissimilar.

It is also great for the transmission of high-resolution content, such as charts or photographs with amazing detail and clarity. These events are more enjoyable and memorable once the material on the screen is visible without causing eye strain. Plus, the clear images combined with the smooth motion makes sign language simple to follow for hearing-impaired conference participants. The high-definition technology makes the quality and array of information communicated through video conferences an even more valuable communication product for everybody.

With present day technologies you are able to rely solely on standard PC servers and desktops to complete boardroom-quality conferencing, but this same technology enables us to go far beyond. Though hardware-based systems are still available today, the entire process is becoming more wonderfully complex than any other time. Nonetheless, the idea is the same but with time the transmission has changed.Now we have lifesize video conferencing

Data Growing Endlessly?
A storage area networks (SAN) is usually a storage device (for example disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes) to servers therefore the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically possesses its own network of storage devices which are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices. The cost and complexity of SANs dropped in the late 2000s, allowing wider adoption across both enterprise and small to medium sized business environments.

A storage area networks (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetwork) that interconnects different varieties of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall network of computing helpful information on an enterprise.

Sharing storage usually simplifies storage administration and adds flexibility since cables and storage devices do not have to be physically moved to shift storage from one server to a different.

Other benefits include the ability to allow servers to boot from the SAN itself. This allows for a fast and simple replacing faulty servers since the SAN could be reconfigured so that a replacement server may use the LUN from the faulty server.This technique may take less than half an hour and it is a relatively new idea being pioneered in newer data centers. There are numerous of emerging products designed to facilitate and speed this up still further. Although this area of technology is still new many notice being the future of the enterprise datacenter.

SANs also tend to enable more effective disaster recovery processes. A SAN could span a distant location containing a secondary storage array. This allows storage replication either implemented by disk array controllers, by server software, or by specialized SAN devices. Since IP WANs are usually the least costly technique of long-distance transport, the Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and iSCSI protocols have been developed to permit SAN extension over IP networks.

The traditional physical SCSI layer could only support a few meters of distance - not nearly enough to make sure business continuance in a disaster.The economical consolidation of disk arrays has accelerated the advancement of several features including I/O caching, snapshotting, and volume cloning (Business Continuance Volumes or BCVs).

Sharing storage usually simplifies storage administration and adds flexibility since cables and storage devices do not have to be physically moved to shift storage from one server to another.Other benefits range from the capability allow servers to boot from your SAN itself.

This allows for the fast and simple replacement of faulty servers since the SAN could be reconfigured so that an alternative server can use the LUN from the faulty server. This technique can take less than 30 minutes and is a comparatively new idea being pioneered in newer data centers. There are a number of emerging products designed to facilitate and speed this up even more. While this part of technology continues to be new many notice being the future of the enterprise datacenter.

SANs also tend to enable far better disaster recovery processes. A SAN could span a distant location containing a second storage array. This enables storage replication either implemented by disk array controllers, by server software, or by specialized SAN devices. Since IP WANs will often be the very least costly approach to long-distance transport, the Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and iSCSI protocols happen to be developed to allow SAN extension over IP networks.

The standard physical SCSI layer could only support a few meters of distance - not nearly enough to ensure business continuance in a disaster.The economical consolidation of disk arrays has accelerated the advancement of countless features including I/O caching, snapshotting, and volume cloning (Business Continuance Volumes or BCVs).

Wan Optimization
Wikipedia definition: “WAN optimization controllers aim to accelerate a diverse range of programs accessed by distributed enterprise users via getting rid of redundant transmissions, staging data in local caches, compressing and prioritizing data, and streamlining chatty protocols.”

Okay, well it looks appealing but I believe we must dive in to this definition in more detail to truly determine what this means and the way it affects you.

As you know already, wide area networks generally consist of really sluggish links and connections that interconnect branch offices, vendors, partners along with mobile workers.

Despite WAN bandwidth prices going down on a regular basis, these kinds of links and connections remain extremely costly.

As corporate applications are more and much more important on the survival and development of the business’ bottom line, IT departments encounter difficult choices about how exactly to supply more applications with improved WAN capabilities to everyone of the end users.

These kinds of concerns currently have slowly turned out to be enormous challenges for IT managers and directors over the past 24 months.



In earlier times, the delusion that “obtaining a lot more network bandwidth will answer my issues” was the normal reaction when a business was going through slow program performance over the wide area network.

This answer was credited simply due to the fact there are restricted types of IT professionals to attempt to improve application performance with out raising WAN bandwidth.