Every day we go into work and our wireless devices immediately connect to the corporate network. Smart phones, tablets and laptops are all sharing the same Internet connections. The applications we use on these devices include email, VPN and possibly some other in house applications. Personal applications which might also be used during the day include Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, iTunes, YouTube, etc. and all of these consume lots of bandwidth including the applications that generally aren’t used for many work related tasks.
Each time we check in on Facebook or download a movie or a song before hitting the gym after work, we collectively create huge amounts of traffic. If you think your network admin is wise to this, he or she might not include traffic monitoring as part of the mobility management effort. Although some suspect excessive traffic to non-work related sites, few are aware of the resources they have available to track it. If the call center isn’t receiving complaints many network admins aren’t looking for cans of worms to open.
Some network admins however are concerned about traffic loads and looking for ways to free up bandwidth. For this reason, they need to keep the following in mind. When someone launches Facebook, several connections are launched immediately after login. All the ads and pictures we download is like turning on a faucet and letting it run as we peruse all of our friends walls and profiles during lunch. If we include Pandora, YouTube and Netflix the traffic volume problem exacerbates. Media streaming can cause massive amounts of traffic and sometimes it is transmitted with the same bandwidth priority as business related traffic. In the end, the company’s ability to carry on with business routines can suffer and this is something none of us want. How can we help?
Although abstinence sounds like the voice of reason, in reality, containing our desires from using our favorite apps isn’t likely to happen. This is however, exactly what needs to be done. How do we encourage a bandwidth culture of self-control? It will of course take time but, beware of your habits because awareness is rising.
IT professionals using existing investments in Dell and hardware from several other vendors are becoming aware of the visibility they have into your traffic browsing (i.e. HTTP host and URL) history. They don’t even need to go looking because these details can be automatically emailed every day. Network monitoring solutions can often serve up scheduled - detailed reports depicting the top end users and web sites being visited.
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A single click on any one of the above will tell us who is visiting these domains, how much data they transmitted and how often during the day they visit each of these sites. For some of us, the details can be embarrassing as the information available can expose a lot about our behaviors on the network. Some solutions (e.g. SonicWALL) will even serve up the username that was used to authenticate the device onto the network. It’s tough to stay incognito with contextual details like this.
All you need is a NetFlow v9 or IPFIX collection solution. Dell and a plethora of other vendors are aware of the surge in non-work related traffic in the business place and they are finally providing the details network and security admins need to gain insight into the scale of the bandwidth abuse problem. What percent of time on your wireless device is really work related?
If you want to learn more, download a copy of the book on NetFlow and IPFIX.
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