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Tag: high availability network

  • Ensuring Network Connectivity With SD-WAN and AIOps

    Ensuring Network Connectivity With SD-WAN and AIOps

    Recently, Facebook experienced an outage. If companies relied on that app to do business, their IT teams were likely swamped with end-user complaint calls. 

    How would teams traditionally respond? They’d dive deep into the rabbit hole, analyzing issues on a case-by-case basis, asking countless questions, including: 

    • Could there be a problem with the enterprise network?
    • Is the service provider experiencing issues?
    • Are just a few users affected or is the issue more systemic?

    Traditionally, this manual process requires significant knowledge sharing and time to complete as teams break the problem into smaller pieces to triangulate an issue’s root cause.

    Oftentimes, it’s an enterprise network that experiences connectivity issues—not apps like Facebook. 

    Some companies pay an arm and a leg to leverage highly reliable WAN links, such as MPLS, for connecting to the internet and connecting branches to their data centers. Conversely, they may save a buck or two by using commodity links, like cable or DSL, which deliver less reliability. Both choices introduce tough tradeoffs—could there be a better way to ensure enterprise-wide connectivity?

    Enter SD-WAN. 

    Combining the same service-level agreement (SLA) as a dependable WAN link with the affordability of a commodity link, SD-WAN specializes in handling brownout situations, rerouting link traffic to maintain network connectivity — ensuring users’ access to their must-have apps. 

    And by incorporating artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps), teams can harness the power of analytics to radically reduce their response time, ensuring that if problems do happen, they get fixed fast. In fact, 90% of IT professionals acknowledge that powering network management with AIOps will improve their companies’ business outcomes.

    Drowning in Data: Understanding Traditional Network Issue Investigation Headaches

    To determine the root cause of a service disruption, teams spend considerable time assessing the landscape of all the different apps that people use and the links they follow to use them. These apps could be located anywhere—forcing teams to find needles across vast haystacks of data to determine what went wrong.

    And this data is exploding at such an extraordinarily high rate that it’s practically impossible for anyone to keep track of it all. Only by leveraging an advanced analytics system like AIOps can teams gain the necessary insights to swiftly solve problems. 

    SD-WAN and AIOps: A Problem-Solving Dream Team

    How do SD-WAN and AIOps work together to enable a highly reliable, always-connected network?

    SD-WAN quickly addresses all potential local issues and optimizes performance and connectivity across multiple WAN links—or even just a single WAN link that may be unreliable. SD-WAN also ensures that business-critical apps are prioritized correctly and are offered the precise amount of error correction that avoids any issues or disruptions as much as possible over the WAN. 

    Where does AIOps come into play? It analyzes data at a far more granular level for extended periods over a global topology. What is it looking for? Everything. It’s examining emerging patterns that are impacting individual apps. It’s searching for systemic issues that affect multiple SD-WAN edge devices simultaneously, worldwide. It could also be investigating how edges or apps are being affected over a particular time period. 

    By surfacing all that data, AIOps analyzes much more than SD-WAN can. And by deriving insights from that data, it highlights issues affecting everything from a lone user on a single application to a systemic issue that’s impacting an app across a far broader cohort of users. In certain cases, AIOps can cue the SD-WAN to heal itself and automatically fix the problem, then verify that the issue was fixed. As a result, end-users remain connected to their network.

    Inside a Wholly Adopted SD-WAN/AIOps Environment

    Imagine you’re an IT admin, supporting an extremely complex enterprise network, spanning thousands of different sites that use diverse security services for connecting to apps. Even if you’re on a huge team that’s charged with monitoring the network, it would be nearly impossible to have full visibility across the network to solve problems as they occur.

    By adopting SD-WAN together with AIOps, you gain a superpower. No, you won’t be able to fly or become invisible, but AIOps will make you omniscient, enabling you to:

    • Harness powerful analytics firepower to find and fix network trouble spots instantly and precisely before users complain—in some cases before they even notice
    • Understand which sites perform better than others to pinpoint where improvements can be made
    • Propose configuration changes that help the network self-optimize and self-heal
    • Detect and optimize degraded links to boost user experience

    And if issues ever do arise, AIOps advises you immediately as it monitors the network 24/7, providing you with full situational awareness and insights, solving problems as they occur.

    SD-WAN & AIOps: Maintaining Connectivity by Self-Healing

    The Facebook event was unusual in that it globally impacted the world’s users, who couldn’t access the app through any Facebook data center. In that scenario, AIOps simply identified the app disruption and noted the root cause.

    But what if the situation had been different? For example, imagine if Facebook’s U.S. west coast datacenters were deemed unavailable but its east coast datacenters were operational. By combining SD-WAN with AIOps, a similarly affected company could have performed diagnosis and ensured app connectivity. 

    How could that have played out? 

    First, AIOps would have detected the issue and its root cause. It would have reported that the application was unreachable to users on the west coast but available to users on the east coast. Finally, SD-WAN would have self-healed by rerouting end-user application traffic to the eastern data centers to maintain app connectivity.

    Using the old-school method of manually monitoring and troubleshooting networks is nearly impossible for most IT teams. Instead, teams are relying on SD-WAN and AIOps. This combined capability gives teams an unbeatable superpower, enabling them to substantially improve connectivity across the enterprise and rapidly respond to issues as they occur.

  • How Embedded Real-Time Engagement Makes the Internet More Inclusive

    How Embedded Real-Time Engagement Makes the Internet More Inclusive

    We hear the word “inclusivity” thrown about quite a bit these days. Some would call it a buzzword, but inclusivity is important to consider given all the innovation we have seen in the past decade. From powerful smartphones to VR video games, technological capabilities keep moving ahead in leaps and bounds.

    However, factors like geographic location, disabilities and socioeconomic standing  prevent some of us from reaping the technological benefits as much as others. The good news is, when incorporated correctly, technology can close these gaps and improve access to important resources and engagement on a global scale.

    What Does Inclusivity in Technology Actually Look Like?

    Simply put, inclusivity in technology is a concerted effort by developers (and the businesses that hire them) to create with empathy. It also means approaching accessibility as an opportunity, not a burden. This sounds easy, but the reality is that mobile and desktop apps are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Today, almost every single platform we use has a social component and provides elements of real-time engagement.

    From live streaming, to broadcasting, to video chat and beyond, real-time engagement technology is bringing new services and communication capabilities to the masses in amazing new ways. In fact, it has reached incredible prevalence in all industries as consumers demand the ability to connect with others as they do just about everything online. This includes shopping, playing video games, collaborating with coworkers, working out and even getting an education — name the activity and there’s a need for voice and video capabilities to improve it online.

    But, there are still glaring inequalities in who can enjoy the services we can now access through real-time engagement technology. While there are many different ways to weave inclusivity into a program’s design, here are just a few to consider.

    Borders Are for Maps, Not Your Apps

    Where we are born shouldn’t be the deciding factor of whether or not we can enjoy the technological revolution. However, limited access to 5G and technology still makes it hard for some communities to access real-time engagement platforms. Take for example a remote, rural village served by 2G internet while major metropolitan centers with 5G access can stream everything from sports events to yoga classes.

    Building on a dedicated real-time communications network can be the great equalizer. Unlike public networks, dedicated networks deliver scalable, sub-second and low-latency results from anywhere in the world. This is made possible with algorithms that monitor in real-time and select the most efficient routing path automatically. The end result is a high-availability network that sees no boundaries.

    Dedicated networks are already making a huge difference. Doki Doki, a voice technology company, announced a partnership to work with South African National Council for the Blind to bring Dabel, an audio streaming app, to blind users in underserved regions of Africa. By integrating Agora’s dedicated network, Doki Doki was able to ensure that Dabel could cross borders and reach users on low-bandwidth networks and on lower-powered devices.

    Design with Users with Disabilities in Mind

    Many companies do not do enough to accommodate users with disabilities. For example, those who are hard of hearing might not be able to enjoy audio features of certain applications. In this day and age, that’s simply unacceptable. While developers might be challenged to create an equally rich experience for all users, they can lead the charge to design inclusively by making modifications to popular apps and platforms that  keep accessibility in mind.

    According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, at least 10% of Americans (roughly 25 million) deal with some level of hearing loss that ranges from mild to total deafness. To communicate, this community uses the widely adopted American Sign Language (ASL) system. But not everyone knows ASL, which can make communication difficult. People with hearing impairments can communicate via interpreters when available, but this option isn’t often available online. This creates obvious barriers to free-flowing and natural conversation on real-time engagement platforms.

    As developers, we can empower end-users with hearing impairments by building a sign language recognition app into platforms that translates ASL gestures into text and speech in real-time. This kind of app lets users sign-in to a video chat while the application simultaneously uses machine learning and augmented reality to translate ASL into spoken word or text.

    The utility of this technology can be limitless when applied more widely. Consider for a moment a mobile therapy application. The beauty of these apps is that users can quickly access mental health services when they need them the most. But, what if a therapist who knows ASL isn’t online when a person who is hearing impaired needs a session? Integrated sign language recognition would reduce barriers to having a meaningful virtual experience for a wider range of users.

    Expand Access to Essential Resources Like Healthcare

    Providing widely-available, quality healthcare is a central value across many cultures, but for many, the quality of healthcare can vary greatly based on physical resources. If physical infrastructure is lagging, why not turn to digital platforms to try and lessen gaps in care?

    In early March, DrFirst, a pioneer in telehealth, announced the creation of Backline, a powerful collaboration tool that allows healthcare providers and patients to communicate from anywhere in the world. By way of powerful, real-time engagement features, clinicians can remotely treat symptoms, discuss care plans and even correspond with EMTs in emergencies. For patients that live in underserved regions or who may be contagious, this alternate avenue could mean the difference between life and death.

    Developing to Deliver Solutions

    As developers, we have the power to help connect people around the world and deliver valuable resources with minimal barriers to access. With the pandemic upending any notion we had of a normal life, this has never been more apparent. Innovation is springing up in diverse places as we watch industries undergo swift digital transformations in an attempt to stay relevant.

    As we ride this wave of ingenuity, we should remember that access means more than just being able to download an app and run it on your phone or web browser. Today, we have sophisticated technology that can be leveraged to bring tech to people and places that have been historically underserved. Developers who create technology with that consciousness in mind can help deliver technological solutions that will improve societies in countless ways.