Challenge
The Information Systems team at Long Beach Transit needed a robust application to monitor bandwidth levels, ensure mission critical data, offer insight into the organization's network and assist in planning for capacity upgrades – all for a price that was within budget.

Solution
By introducing Observer® Suite and remote probes into the network, the IS team gained a solid return on investment and valuable knowledge for troubleshooting and future planning. Observer helped to identify worm-infected devices, offered information on bandwidth utilization, and predicted network reaction to capacity upgrades. Now, with the insight offered by Observer, the IS team is better prepared to deal with network issues today and deploy new technologies (such as VoIP) across the organization.

The Long Beach Transit system serves more than 27 million passengers each year. Network Administrator Mesmak "Mark" Giorgis manages the LAN and WAN systems. The organization has over 200 nodes and over 20 servers to assist corporate employees. The network spans two buildings and a terminal station connected via a private, point-to-point microwave link.

"Each bus is equipped with a GPS automobile vehicle location device, which communicates back to our network so we can tell exactly where the buses are," said Giorgis.

Traveling On a Strict Budget
"Our network problems were becoming more and more complex," said Giorgis. "We were trying to get rid of viruses, eliminate network chatter, free up bandwidth—it was all becoming too time consuming. Sniffer® was outside my price range; I could not justify that cost internally. Observer had the perfect price. Network Instruments® also offered me a two-week evaluation copy to make sure I was getting what I needed."

Giorgis chose Observer Suite and two remote probes—one for Long Beach Transit's second location and another for the terminal station.

Isolating Unwelcome Passengers
Right away Observer was put to the test. Long Beach Transit was hit with the W32 Welchia worm. The worm crippled the network, infecting about 75% of the systems.

"I looked at Observer, looked at my Top Talkers, captured and decoded some packets and bingo," said Giorgis. "With Observer's packet decode screen, I quickly recognized a pattern of ascending values in the last octet of the destination IP address. This helped me identify which systems were infected. With Observer, I could locate every instance of the virus, take the appropriate steps to disinfect the network, and get our systems back to normal."

Watching for Traffic Jams
Observer Suite reports daily metrics on which systems are generating the most traffic. Identifying the network's Top Talkers is an easy way to control traffic levels and monitor bandwidth utilization. Giorgis has eliminated a great deal of unwanted chatter with Observer.

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