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How will you manage your bandwidth during IPL?

The recently concluded Cricket World Cup fever brought to the foretwo important elements

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Sanghamitra Kar
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Nirmit Glennon

Nirmit Glennon

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The recently concluded Cricket World Cup fever brought to the fore two important elements.

One, ongoing intelletual debate on the game, and two but most importantly, spirally demand on corporate network as employees live streamed matches in the offices.

As a result, the performance of critical business-enabling apps was impacted. Cut to today, as the IPL team is set to fine tune its last minute strategies, the soaring fervor for the India ka Tehvaar, has network engineers struggling to counter the potentially enormous load on corporate networks and avoid costly downtime of applications and software.

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So how can organizations counter the effects of increased demand on the bandwidth on the corporate network?

Here are a few suggestions:

* Monitor real-time network bandwidth consumption:

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Determine which applications consume maximum bandwidth and obtain historical data to interpret usage patterns over a period of time to allocate bandwidth.

Monitor applications that use dynamic ports, as those apps would not be recognized by open source flow monitor software.

Govern applications used on mobile devices as most employees bring their own devices (BYOD) and access the corporate network through them.

* Prioritize network traffic and reconfigure bandwidth (traffic shaping)

Map the applications to get a clear picture of the enterprise's bandwidth needs. Ensure a guaranteed percentage of bandwidth for critical applications by reconfiguring the bandwidth.

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Identify bandwidth bottlenecks and troubleshoot network incidents ASAP.

Restrict bandwidth to certain websites, as streaming a video consumes a lot of bandwidth depending on the quality of the stream.

Set real-time alerts to be notified when the bandwidth utilization exceeds the threshold settings.

* Identify and neutralize security threats:

Watch the Web. According to a recent Osterman Research survey, some kind of malware has infiltrated at least 74 percent of organizations via the Web.

Educate the employees about scammers using world cup-related videos and news to lead unsuspecting users to sites in an attempt to distribute malware.

Track abnormal spikes in traffic pattern, isolate the IP addresses infected by the attack, and neutralize the threat.

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* Screen the cricket matches in common areas:

This will help the IT managers to best tackle bandwidth issues during the IPL matches, and creates a win-win situation for both the employees and the IT admins. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the exhilarating action that is set to drive the entire nation into frenzy.

The article is authored by regional manager, India, ManageEngine

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