Do you know all the applications going through your network? How about just your proxy? You may think all traffic going through the proxy is innocuous, I mean really, it's just web traffic right? Probably not. Many applications tunnel over HTTP and while to your firewall and router it may all look like web traffic, it's probably a combination of web, P2P (file sharing), video streaming, chat and other traffic you may not find so desirable on your enterprise network.
If you suspect that your bandwidth bills are going up because of unwanted traffic, (or if your bandwidth usage bills are going up regardless of your suspicions), it may be time for a network assessment to figure out what traffic is going around your network and through your proxy.
What does a network assessment entail? Installing a device into your network to monitor they types of applications that are using up your network bandwidth. A classic device that does this is the PacketShaper, developed originally by Packeteer (and now part of the Blue Coat Systems family). A PacketShaper can sit inline in your network and classify traffic into over 600 categories, regardless of the port being used by the application.
Before your network usage keeps growing, maybe it's time to find out what's really going on in your network.
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2 comments:
Tim,
Have you looked into a more behavior based approach as an alternative to Packet Shaper?
Art Reisman
www.netequalizer.com
While behavior based approaches sound interesting, I think it's a little more than what most admins need right now, which is just to understand what's actually on their network. That's a first step!
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