InformationWeek

A new breed of network switches and maturing policy-management software tools promise to let companies build networks intelligent enough to distinguish applications crucial to business operations from those that are less important. These smart networks will let IT managers ensure that critical applications get the bandwidth they need.

Cisco Systems and Oracle next week will unveil an interoperability initiative designed to optimize the performance of Oracle applications on Cisco-based networks. The partnership comes on the heels of a similar arrangement Cisco forged last week with PeopleSoft Inc. The deals represent the first time that the CiscoAssure policy-management platform, a sophisticated network-and bandwidth-management tool, is being optimized for specific vital applications.

At the same time, switch vendors such as Arrow Point Communications, Foundry Networks, and Top Layer Networks are building networking devices smart enough to recognize traffic traveling to and from critical business applications and give that traffic priority. Next week, Alteon WebSystems Inc. will introduce a new line of switches, the Alteon 700 series, that also includes "application-aware" management services.

Higher-Level Networking
Application-aware networking isn't entirely new-Cisco and other internetworking equipment vendors such as Fore Systems, Nortel, and 3Com have been developing products for more than a year. But until recently, the systems couldn't analyze traffic and allocate bandwidth in real time. As a result, the technology isn't widely deployed. The new, more capable switches and tools may change that, allowing companies to build networks that are much smarter. "They provide a higher level of application-aware networking," says Eddie Hold, an analyst at Current Analysis Inc. "The fact that these devices can do this is a great thing."

Interest among network and IT managers is high. Policy-based management, which sets guidelines or policies for prioritizing network traffic, is catching on as a way of ensuring that important applications have adequate bandwidth. An InformationWeek Research survey of 211 IT managers conducted last month found that 45% have implemented or plan to implement policy-based and quality-of-service bandwidth-management techniques. "Companies today tend to add bandwidth until end users stop screaming," says Bob Bellman, a principal at Brook Trail Research. "If you can automate the way network policies are administrated and enforced, you can make the manager's life a lot easier."

Boosting the brainpower of the corporate network should reduce the need to add faster switches and costly high-capacity lines when response time slows because application-aware networks can ensure that important data packets aren't drowned out by run-of-the-mill Web, video, and other lower-priority traffic.

United Water Resources Inc., a water-services company in Harrington Park, N.J., plans to use CiscoAssure to give top priority on its network to PeopleSoft data, as well as to traffic from United Water's customer-information system.

"Network bandwidth is a free-for-all. Whoever gets there first can get it all," says Bill Gemza, director of IT projects at United Water Resources. "Networks are going to get busier and busier as we move forward, and there's going to be a lot of contention for available bandwidth as we add more bandwidth-intensive applications like document management and data warehousing." Gemza is concerned that the bandwidth-hungry applications could impede the company's PeopleSoft applications, which manage all of its information for general ledger, purchasing, inventory, accounts payable, budgeting, asset management, project costing, time entry, and expense reporting.

Rather than increase network speeds and invest in faster equipment, Gemza plans to use the Cisco QoS Policy Manager. "This will let us leverage the available bandwidth to the most critical applications on the network," he says.

Maintaining Efficiency
IT managers also plan to use these new capabilities to ensure that no application-no matter how important-will devour all network resources. Even the most important applications sometimes generate large amounts of traffic, which can affect network efficiency. PeopleSoft apps, for example, tend to be very "chatty," creating a lot of traffic between client and servers on a network. A user who simply moves his cursor to a certain part of a PeopleSoft interface can generate more than a dozen messages between a PC and server; actually clicking on an icon can generate 100 or more transmissions. Though each transmission is small, they can add up to a significant amount of bandwidth.

Cisco and PeopleSoft are establishing two laboratories to create guidelines for network administrators to set policies that identify PeopleSoft application streams as they cross Cisco-based networks and give them specific levels of priority. Cisco and Oracle plan to develop similar guidelines for Oracle traffic.

Cisco is working with other leading application vendors to add capabilities that will enable its switches to recognize other network traffic. The CiscoAssure policy-networking platform includes Cisco's QoS Policy Manager, policy-management software released last month, and the Cisco Network Registrar, an address-management capability used to provide specific levels of bandwidth or network resources to particular users or applications. The software has been incorporated into Cisco's Catalyst line of LAN switches, among other Cisco devices.

Other networking vendors have enhanced their products to make them more application-aware through policy management. 3Com's PathBuilder S500 router can distinguish among different types of applications and prioritize one over others. Fore Systems' ESX line of routing switches has application-aware capabilities that are able to classify traffic flows and enforce policies in real time. And Nortel Networks' Optivity Policy Services dynamically allocates network resources to specific applications and users.

Setting Priorities
Having the ability to set policies that allocate bandwidth for specific applications is considered crucial for companies that plan to merge voice, video, and data applications onto a single network. Raytheon Systems Inc. is building a network to let engineers countrywide collaborate on projects. The network is expected to carry three-dimensional imagery from computer-aided drafting applications as well as voice and video traffic. "As you build collaborative environments, you want to give priority service to mission-critical applications, as well as to certain customers and their mission-critical applications," says Raytheon CIO James Infinger. Raytheon is also using the CiscoAssure policy-management platform.

Using software tools to set bandwidth policies for particular applications is only one approach. Some IT managers are testing a new class of switches that can look at data packets, identify the type of applications generating that traffic, and provide them with varying degrees of priority as they cross the network. Many of these switches and capabilities are so new that few IT managers have hands-on experience with them.

The Alteon 700 Web switch includes application-management software, called WebOS, to manage network bandwidth used by different applications. Top Layer Networks last week introduced the AppSwitch 2000, which can identify and prioritize traffic coming from ERP, human resources, PointCast, Internet Relay Chat, and other applications. And last month, Foundry Networks enhanced its switch platform with application awareness (March 22, p. 104;).

Bandwidth Limits
The ability to set network and bandwidth priorities lets IT managers limit the amount of bandwidth any single application can command. David Foss, director of networking at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is testing the Top Layer switch for that reason. "We want to say that a specific stream generated by one machine can take up no more than 20% of the total available bandwidth," he says.

Other IT managers say application-aware switches can reduce the need to buy additional circuits when networks get clogged because those switches can use existing resources more intelligently.

The Boston Globe is testing a Top Layer switch to see if it can ensure that FTP packets containing stories from the newspaper's writers are given top priority on the network, says Kai Lee, the paper's manager of new technology. "We're going to have a lot of extranet services that aren't Web based," Lee says. The switch should also let him "specify that a certain URL tied to a money-making application gets the highest priority."

Companies implementing revenue-generating network applications see great promise in the new switches and software tools. Financialweb.com in Orlando, Fla., is building E-commerce services on an application-aware network using Alteon 700 switches. This summer, the online financial information provider plans to launch a suite of subscription services that push real-time stock quotes and financial data out to subscribers' desktops. But the company needs to make sure that traffic generated by paying subscribers isn't drowned out by huge amounts of traffic generated by thousands of nonpaying visitors to the Web site of Financialweb.com.

Financialweb.com plans to set up policies identifying packets sent to URLs available only to sub- scribing customers and give them priority over traffic generated by other users. "We'll make sure that at any point in time, our subscription services have at least half of our Internet bandwidth available to them-no matter how busy we are," says John Dodds, a senior systems administrator at Financialweb.com.