A wealth of network management products from Cisco and third-party suppliers underscores the value and complexity of supporting IT infrastructure. Progent's seasoned network management engineers are expert at helping businesses design network management solutions utilizing on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Syslog, and NetFlow protocols to create powerful mechanisms for tracking network utilization and network latency, viewing important router and switch performance characteristics, and recognizing traffic patterns, processes, and appliances that use network resources.
Progent can help customers to utilize a broad range of open source and proprietary monitoring and management products to manage a Cisco network. Tools used by Progent's consultants include MRTG, Cacti, Nagios, Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM), Cisco Monitor Manager, CiscoWorks, Cisco Security Manager, OpenView, AlterPoint DeviceAuthority, Adventnet Netflow and Firewall Analyzer, Big Brother, and Necordia NetMRI.
Network management tools can help organizations to be aware of current network usage and intelligently prepare for downstream traffic expansion. Management utilities can also be used to highlight poor or inappropriate utilization of network services, such as streaming multimedia, peer-to-peer sharing, etc. that can eat up expensive or scarce network bandwidth. A carefully crafted network management solution can also assist organizations to make intelligent decisions on network enhancements once they appreciate the amount of system resources really needed at various times.
Putting an effective network management platform in place ahead of time is critical to avoid severe disruptions that can result from Denial Of Service (DoS) attacks and dangerous viruses/Trojans. These events can leave the network unstable and in the absence of appropriate utilities it can be time consuming, if not practically impossible, to find the source of the problem.
Network Management Products from Cisco
Cisco has created a selection of powerful tools that should form the foundation for any management strategy. Used in combination with appropriate outside vendor tools, Cisco's network management software can improve the business value of networks for organizations of any size by dealing with important areas such as resource utilization, throughput, resilience, security, troubleshooting, and scalability. Cisco's top network management products include:
Cisco ASDM is a browser-based utility that allows you to set up and monitor the management utilities built into security appliances. Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager is loaded by the Cisco device, and enables you to set up, track, and manage the unit.
Cisco Monitor Manager is a management application designed to address the requirements of small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Monitor Manager actively tracks key appliance parameters on voice/data networks serving five to 250 workers and with up to 250 Cisco Unified IP phones. Monitor Manager provides:
Network Assistant is a desktop-based management application optimized for wired and wireless LANs (WLANs) for growing organizations that have up to 40 Cisco switches and routers. By running Smartports technology, Network Assistant streamlines configuration, installation, and continuing management and support of Cisco-based networks. It offers a centralized network view and allows network managers to employ its functions across switches, routers, and wireless access points.
Security Manager is a powerful but simple to operate solution for centrally provisioning all facets of device set up and policies for firewalls, virtual private networks, and IPS. The solution effectively handles even small networks with fewer than ten appliances, but also scales to manage enterprise networks composed of thousands of devices. Expansion is enabled through intelligent policy-driven control techniques that can simplify administration. Key features of Security Manager are:
Progent can also show you how to utilize network management applications to analyze and classify system data to enable traffic shaping, which allows you to set up Cisco routers to impose different throughput restrictions on certain classes of processes based on the importance you assign. By buffering and queuing data packets above your contracted volume, and by giving preference to critical processes, traffic shaping can keep service provider excess usage penalties from spiraling out of control and/or eliminate gaps in worker productivity caused by brute force policing of your network traffic volume restrictions during peak demand.
Progent's CISM and CISSP security specialists can assist you to develop a comprehensive security strategy that encompasses your network management solution, and Progent's remote and on-premises network specialists and Cisco CCIE-certified consultants can utilize advanced network management tools to isolate and repair trouble quickly to keep your IT system in business.
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