Video Usage

It's old news, but Cisco has estimated that 90% of all internet traffic will be consumer based video by 2013. That of course instantly translates to businesses as well, whether or not the IT administrator realizes it or not. In fact what most network assessment companies find, is that most IT admins really have little idea of the types of traffic that's running on their network. For example, do you know what percentage of your traffic is peer-to-peer, video usage, or social networking?

PacketShaper users do know, but that's because it's one product that's commonly used in network assessments. But if you're not a PacketShaper owner, what can you do? One thing you can do is to make sure your web proxy or secure web gateway is reporting on video usage and social networking usage. Make sure you know who the top video watcher is on your network, and what percentage of your web traffic goes to video sites.

For social networking, you want to know the same things, but you probably also want controls to either create a "read-only" social networking policy, or at least examine the content that's going to social networking sites. These are features your web proxy or secure web gateway should be able to provide you today.