“With Observer, it’s easy to find rogue access points,” said Wilson. “I simply load Observer onto my laptop and walk around the building to find which access points are transmitting. I only had six access points deployed, but Observer saw a lot more. Employees were purchasing units on their own and installing them below their desks.This was incredibly dangerous from a security point of view. Thanks to Observer I created a new corporate policy to help protect our network that I could easily enforce with the analyzer I already had.”

Using Performance Indicators for Proactive Management
Observer also monitors bandwidth utilization by comparing actual network activity with network capacity offering insight into network load.This feature lets Wilson balance WLAN traffic ensuring no device is over-burdened.

“Each of our access points can handle about 10 or 15 users and with Observer I can quickly see how each access point is being utilized,” said Wilson. “It’s easy to juggle network traffic accordingly to get the maximum throughput on each access point.”

Observer’s Network Trending collects and stores network statistics so IT administrators can review and analyze the data over time.With this data, baselining activities can be performed to gauge how the network is performing.

“With baselining I can tell if something is out of the ordinary,” said Wilson. “At first my assumption was that our network traffic dies down in the evening, but after reviewing Observer’s reporting I saw this was not the case. The more you understand traffic levels the better you can engineer your network accordingly. Every morning, I check the bandwidth utilization graph for inconsistencies. For example, if the network traffic suddenly shot up at 2 AM, I know that is out of the ordinary and something I need to investigate.”

Every network requires upgrades, capacity planning and long-term adjustments.With Observer’s comprehensive reporting features, Wilson lets his management team generate Web reports at their leisure to understand network health.

“With this type of reporting and data, I have the evidence to persuade my manager to fund network upgrades,” said Wilson. “Observer’s capabilities provide a great deal of value to our entire department. Once you get your management on board, getting new versions is much easier.”

No More Counting Sheep
Observer has helped save Select Comfort key dollars in unnecessary equipment upgrades by pointing to the source of the problem. When the network began slowing down, the immediate assumption was capacity issues but Observer showed this not to be the case.

“With Observer’s reporting I could see our WLAN traffic was slowing down,” said Wilson. “I thought the issue fell with our current capacity and we needed to upgrade our access points. By digging a bit deeper with Observer,we saw a new application was actually causing the delay. This application was internally developed and by adjusting the program, we were able to get throughput back to normal – without having to purchase a thing.”

Observer’s ability to secure Select Comfort’s network traffic is the single most important benefit to Wilson.

“The knowledge and insight provided by Observer is priceless,” said Wilson. “How can I quantify how much money and time we’ve potentially saved by locating rogue access points? Observer ensured our data wasn’t susceptible to hackers – I can’t tell you how much that is worth.”

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