Stuart Birch, CEO The complex structures of evolving networks are making the network monitoring tools expensive and equally taxing for the network engineers to find problems on the network. CIOs are in constant search of reliable, scalable and cost-effective systems that will simplify the tracking of performance and reliability of the networks and solve the frustration of working with monolithic systems and conversely open-source tools in Network Monitoring environments. Iris Networks, a firm in Western Cape, South Africa, is mitigating this problem by designing a robust and scalable data collection framework to deliver network management data quickly to the user. “Iris collects millions of data points and tries to make sense of these to give an indication of health of the network,” begins Stuart Birch, CEO, Iris Network Systems.
The company offers Iris Network Monitoring Software (NMS), a (SaaS)-based model, which monitors the network assets. Where a typical NMS system runs a heavy discovery process to figure out the changes in the clients’ network since the last detection, “Iris makes use of a ‘discover-less’ methodology that runs whenever you want it to, and won’t burden your core IP assets,” asserts Birch.
The easy to navigate Iris Core, the centralized management software, amalgamates all the benefits of Iris NMS and delivers it via a standard browser. “We have a Google-like search bar that enables users to rapidly search for interfaces, devices, health metrics, nested Quality of Service (QoS) policies or any other network data point they wish to see, using regular expression search capabilities,” explains Birch. After narrowing down to the search object, the user can click on the firm’s troubleshooter, an area in Iris that brings together time-correlated and related data sources to assist in trouble shooting an issue.
Iris collects millions of data points and tries to make sense of these to give an indication of health of the network
Besides, users can utilize the Netflow Analyzer offered by the company to explore the detail of traffic flows. The system also has other applications such as the ability to ‘group’ and graph the netflow data by customer IP ranges, network ports and protocols and network peers. This is can be used for billing and also trouble shooting. “When a client observes a traffic anomaly, he is able to drill-down and solve any kind of problem,” adds Birch.
Alongside, Iris Maps facilitates clients to have a near real-time representation of the alarm state of their network segments, while allowing a visual representation of the network. Fortigate Reporting sends the clients useful logs, which can be processed to derive meaningful insights into the top users, applications, websites and IP addresses passing through the firewall.
Recently, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that had grown through organic and acquisition strategies approached Iris for assistance. The client had way too many monitoring systems and numerous devices that they were battling to get data out of, which stressed out their sysadmin team. “We were able to quickly consolidate into one system instead of five, and apply a consistent monitoring standard across all core and edge devices on the network,” says Birch. With Iris’s assistance, the customer ended up with less network events on their Network Operations Center (NOC), less customer complaints, a client portal where they could obtain data using self-service and a consistent monitoring standard over the network.
Iris is collecting data from Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) compliant devices as more manufacturers implement it. With telemetry gaining prominence in the near future, the company is keeping abreast of developments and implementing collectors. “We can change and adopt new technologies without having to change the core Iris code,” concludes Birch.
