Enterprises and carriers that haven't taken steps to build the monitoring and analysis infrastructure needed to deal with exponentially growing mobile data traffic better act now.
That's according to Napatech, which specializes in network analysis and acceleration technology. The company notes that the brand-new, LTE data-gobbling iPhone 5 could be a nemesis for those who didn't prepare for it.
“We already know that smartphone users can consume up to six times more bandwidth than normal mobile phone users, but that was at much lower speeds than those supported by the iPhone 5," said Dan Joe Barry, Napatech VP. “Enterprises and carriers are already struggling to keep up with exponentially growing mobile data. This is in effect just adding more wood to the fire. Most people ... complain about the speed of the Internet, and particularly the slow rate at which Web pages load, but the vast majority accept the problem as a fact of Internet life. This is despite the fact that – where enterprise networks are concerned – it is very often the network pinch points that cause the `Internet’ to slow down. Our observations are telling us that the rising tide of BYOD smartphones – topped off by the arrival of the iPhone 5 – is aggravating the situation," he added.
One might argue that the solution to countering the effects of these pinch points centers on monitoring the IT/network resources in order to gain a complete picture of what is happening, and using this information to plan ahead for what has become a constantly evolving IT/network landscape.
“The products and solutions are already available," Barry said. “But, network monitoring and analysis can often be an afterthought or addressed in an ad-hoc manner. The key is to consider network monitoring and analysis holistically in support of the network and service management strategy."
No matter what network appliances are used as part of the network monitoring and analysis infrastructure, Napatech says the most important feature they must support is the ability to scale with network data speeds and volumes in a flexible manner.
