Modeling and Planning on the "As-Running Network"

Traffic Explorer's extensive “what-if” analysis features deliver the industry’s most accurate network planning solution, enabling engineers to easily predict the impact of network changes, whether resolving immediate issues or performing long-term planning. Existing planning tools work off-line, using snapshots of previously captured network topology that quickly become outdated, along with manually entered traffic loads that are at best, crude approximations of actual network traffic. The inaccurate nature of these models limits their utility to long-term planning. By contrast, Traffic Explorer lets engineers model changes on the “as running” network, using the actual routed topology and traffic loads, with detailed information on application and Class of Service composition, either at the current time or from historical data.

With Traffic Explorer, engineers can simulate a broad range of network changes, such as adding or failing routers, interfaces and peerings; adding or moving prefixes; and adjusting IGP metrics, BGP policy configurations or link capacities, applications or services. Planning with an accurate, up-to-date network model lets architects see the real impact of their changes before implementing, and prevents surprises afterwards, thereby reducing time-to-deploy and avoiding unexpected problems. IT organizations can effortlessly maintain accurate network documentation, whether for regulatory compliance requirements or as part of their best practice processes.

Engineers can model adding routers, peerings, and traffic flows to the as running network, then analyze the changes in the network

Traffic Explorer lets engineers easily perform failure impact analyses, showing them how their network would respond in various situations. Simulating link or router failures and seeing the impact on network-wide traffic across all links is as easy as clicking on the interactive topology map. Operators can not only confirm network redundancy, but also predict link loads under different, even cascading, failure scenarios.

Engineers can model downing routers and peering and analyzing the network's behavior to determine if sufficient fault tolerance and redundancy is provisioned, particularly for critical application or CoS traffic

If backup routes are non-existent, or not as desired, Traffic Explorer lets you easily model changes to the routed network so you can verify correct operation when things fail, and ensure ongoing service delivery. Traffic Explorer’s accurate understanding of network-wide routing and traffic provides valuable insight into potential problems, helping to prevent service outages and maximize IT preparedness.