"Top Talkers is now the first screen I check every morning," said Giorgis. "It's a good snapshot to help me see if the network is healthy or if something is out of the ordinary. I can watch protocols and see what traffic is work-related and what is not. Sometimes it can be an easy problem like a bad NIC sending out too much chatter. Most often, high network traffic is due to our users downloading large files from the Internet. With Observer, I can proactively manage my bandwidth levels."

Long Beach Transit monitors bus performance by collecting data on emergency systems, brakes, engine performance and driver information. This vital data is transmitted by a specific group of servers every 60 seconds to a few workstations. This traffic consumes bandwidth, and when the IS team needed to send the same data to all users Giorgis used Observer to predict how the network would respond.

"When the plan came for a more company-wide deployment effort we had to rethink the network configuration," said Giorgis. "Using Observer we first reviewed the current traffic data to determine if our systems could handle the expansion. We agreed we would first put these servers on a separate network or do a redesign. This was the only way we could ensure continued data flow without causing network traffic jams. Without first checking Observer, we would have simply clogged the network and had a whole new set or problems."

Justifying Capacity Upgrades
Observer's Comparison Reports offer IT administrators the ability to compare the network’s current state to how it would behave in various scenarios. Giorgis uses these tools to determine if large network expenditures are necessary.

“With ‘What-If’ Analysis I can see how the network will respond to upgrades before making costly investments,” said Giorgis. “Our microwave has the capacity to carry 16 T1s and we’re going from five T1s to 12 T1s – that’s a big deal. We’re also going to replace all our Cisco 4700 routers with the Cisco 3745 line soon. With Observer I can easily justify the investment and make sure we are not purchasing too much or too little for what we need.”

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