Welcome back to our series on “Uncovering Network Blind Spots.” In Part 1, we introduced the concept of network blind spots and discussed the key risks they pose.
Now that you understand what blind spots are and the risk posed to the infrastructure and your business, it is essential to know how a blind spot can arise in your existing managed environment.
Network blind spots can arise from various factors, particularly as network architectures evolve or change. When a network expands without a proper means of visibility in place, blind spots may result. For example, blind spots arise when new links, equipment, applications, and remote locations are introduced and configured without proper planning and a means to ensure continual monitoring at various levels. Consider the below:
- Growing spectrum of network configuration options: Organizations are increasingly finding that they can choose the network architecture that best suits their specific needs instead of trying to design around a limited set of traditional network models. Choices include centralized, decentralized, distributed, and cloud. Modern networks are shifting towards distributed and decentralized networks for flexibility, security, fault tolerance, and performance. However, this means more nodes with different latencies and complexities in gathering data to troubleshoot issues. Furthermore, the modern approach lacks a superior node that gathers global network insights. Making well-informed decisions based on the state of other nodes in the network becomes challenging and requires more resources. Limited resources and the need to be selective in applying resources leave a chance for blind spots to surface.
- Increasing dependency on SD-WAN: SD-WAN telemetry involves gathering network performance data to monitor and optimize the network. However, monitoring the network with SD-WAN is limited to the components and services of an SD-WAN overlay network, not the underlying layer. Thus, monitoring lacks comprehensive visibility across the entire network. Troubleshooting complex traffic flows and pinpointing the root cause of performance problems becomes difficult. Vendors often advise using NPM tools to monitor application performance and pinpoint the issues related to network latency, packet loss, and jitter.
- Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud Environments: As companies adopt cloud services, traffic flows between on-premises systems, cloud providers, and remote locations. Traditional monitoring tools need help to keep up with the data flow across these environments, creating visibility gaps.
- Multiple Vendors and Technology Platforms: Using a mix of vendors and technology platforms, each with its monitoring tools and standards, can lead to fragmented visibility, where some areas of the network are well-monitored while others are overlooked
In our next and final part of the series, we’ll share how Plixer One can help uncover and eliminate network blind spots, ensuring that your organization has total observability. We’ll also show you how our platform uses advanced analytics and AI to provide real-time insights across your entire network.
Read Part 3: Uncover Network Blind Spots with Plixer One
Post Author
Daniel Luedke
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Welcome back to our series on “Uncovering Network Blind Spots.” In Part 1, we introduced the concept of network blind spots and discussed the
