Modern Network Challenges

Networks are constantly evolving. Because of benefits such as simplified maintenance,

faster development, and scalability many companies started using public clouds to store
and deliver their data and applications. Even though these trends are making a positive
impact, they have also brought some challenges.

Even though there is a great number of new trends and challenges that are emerging
with modern networks, only three prevailing ones will be mentioned here. The first
prevailing trend named Cloud Is the New Data Center is all about companies that are
using a public cloud instead of on-premises equipment, the second prevailing
trend Internet Is the New Network talks about using best-effort internet network as the
main infrastructure for delivering services and the third prevailing trend that is
named SaaS Is the New Application Stack talks about enterprises relying on off-the-
shelf SaaS application for running their business. You can observe those trends with
their corresponding challenges in the following table.

Cloud Is the New Data SaaS Is the New Application

Internet Is the New Network
Center Stack
With the high adoption of
Legacy troubleshooting cloud, SaaS, and SD-WAN
techniques that have been technologies, companies must Enterprises might find it
used by on-premises data heavily rely on the internet. In difficult to understand and
centers are ineffective in addition, the current pandemic improve their user's digital
understanding public cloud has forced most people to experience for off-the-shelf
environments. Some users work from home. Because the applications that are delivered
might also be served from public internet is best-effort, as a SaaS. A great number of
different cloud servers fragile, has no service level application performance
based on the user's physical agreement (SLA), and is management (APM) tools can
location. The enterprises constantly changing, it no longer be used to identify
do not have any insight becomes difficult to deliver a issues and bottlenecks of an
into the cloud, they just stable and non-disruptive application.
expect it to work. digital experience of a SaaS
application.

Network Visibility in the Past

In the past, enterprises were able to have good visibility in the whole environment. They
were relying on technologies such as Syslog, NetFlow, Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP), and packet capturing and analyzing software as tools for Network
Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) and IT Infrastructure Management
(ITIM).
 Visibility Challenge
One of the largest challenges found in modern networks is the limited visibility into the
cloud and the internet, which is also referred as a Blind Spot or a Visibility Gap due to
the fact no single supplier owns the end-to-end infrastructure anymore. The problem
with traditional monitoring device level technologies is that they can only be used with
the equipment you own and are not useful for monitoring other network equipment that
is also a part of the path to the cloud provider or to the users. Most of that network
equipment usually belongs to other ISPs or other companies. The issue is that the
companies do not have an insight into that equipment however it plays a crucial role in
the user's digital experience.

Digital Experience Monitoring

All those challenges are forming a strong need for Digital Experience Monitoring
(DEM). Since there is no way to control the equipment of the underlying infrastructure
itself, there is still a possibility of monitoring the user experience, which ultimately
matters the most anyway. Cisco ThousandEyes, a leading DEM solution is delivering a
comprehensive real-time view of user experience by using various technologies such as
synthetic transaction monitoring (STM), network visibility, endpoint, and real user
monitoring (RUM). DEM could play a critical part in an enterprise's journey to digital
transformation.

Cisco ThousandEyes Overview

Knowing the basic principles behind Cisco ThousandEyes will help you understand
why the Cisco ThousandEyes solution is needed and how you can use it to solve the
problems of modern networks. The biggest selling points of Cisco ThousandEyes are
comprehensive visibility into the user's digital experience, therefore, reducing mean
time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to repair (MTTR).

What Cisco ThousandEyes does:

• It provides visibility into the user's digital experience.

• It drastically reduces MTTR by pinpointing issues in real time.
• It embraces the evidence-and-escalate model.
• It gathers data from agents, correlates it, and presents it in a user-friendly web view or
by REST API.
• It is a SaaS service at its core, based on a flexible usage-based pricing.

Visibility Into the User's Digital Experience

Cisco ThousandEyes is designed to work within various environments, which include
paths over the internet and the usage of a cloud. The service works by deploying
different types of agents within the enterprise and different types of public cloud agents
across the whole globe. The agents are designed to perform various digital experience
tests that operate from OSI Layer 3 to OSI Layer 7. Agents are reporting their findings
to the platform in real time.

After the data that gets reported by various agents gets correlated, it is presented in a
user-friendly web view or in a custom dashboard and can also be accessed through the
Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API). More
info on REST API can be found at https://developer.thousandeyes.com/.

Reducing Mean Time to Repair

Monitoring the digital experience in real time is very important for reducing mean time
to repair (MTTR) and overall business impact that could be caused by anomalies. The
platform is also providing an option for in-app or email alerts, so the responsible
employees get notified as soon as possible.

Differences Between the Evidence-and-Escalate Model Over the Find-and-Fix

Model
The find-and fix mentality works in a reactive fashion. For example, first, some users
start complaining that an enterprise application is not working as expected, and then the
engineers try to find the cause and fix it themselves. It is a model that was used in the
past, since it is only applicable to the traditional network designs where the entire
infrastructure was under company's control.

Contrary to the find-and-fix model, the evidence-and-escalate model works in

a proactive fashion. Because the agents are monitoring the digital experience in real
time, the issues can be identified before the users even notice them. When an engineer
receives an alert, they can take a look in a detailed report and try to pinpoint a location
or device that is the root of the issue. Since most devices are not under the engineer's
control, the engineer can share the report that includes applicable information as
evidence with the responsible entity, which causes faster escalation. For example, the
responsible entity could be an ISP that is having some routing issues. Cisco
ThousandEyes uses an evidence-and-escalate model, which is one of the reasons for
responsive and efficient incident handling.

Cisco ThousandEyes as a Service

Cisco ThousandEyes is following the SaaS model. It is based on a flexible usage-based
pricing that gets measured monthly and billed annually. A demo period can also be
requested by new customers, which gives the customer the insight into the platform
itself. The platform demo can be requested at https://www.thousandeyes.com/request-
demo/.
Conclusion
Cisco ThousandEyes is the optimal solution for monitoring and issues mitigation and
can be seen in action by booking a free demo trial. More information on the Cisco
ThousandEyes solution can be found on the official website
at https://www.thousandeyes.com/.

See Inside-Out Use Case

The inside-out use case or Employee Digital Experience (EDX) use case is applicable to
all companies that are relying on third-party SaaS applications for running their
business or are embracing multicloud topologies.

Challenge
Imagine that an organization has migrated to an email service that is following a SaaS
model. What happens is that the employees are now using the infrastructure that the
organization does not control to get to that email service. Occasionally, those SaaS
applications also experience some discrepancies and downtime. In this scenario, the
organization would like to have an insight into the digital experience of its employees
that are using this application. To make matters even worse, the employees may also be
geographically dispersed since the organization might have multiple branches and the
work from home is on the rise.

Solution
Cisco ThousandEyes is providing insight into the state of the underlying internet
infrastructure and into the overall digital experience of its employees. It does it by
performing various digital experience tests and correlating the data in real time. These
tests are designed to mimic employees using the service so the test traffic also gets
treated in the same way. Those tests may include Layer 3 connectivity to the SaaS
cloud, an HTTP server test to the SaaS application, or even transaction tests like logging
in the email application and sending a test email. Every test has its metrics for
evaluating the digital experience. Those metrics may include packet loss, availability,
server response time, time to perform a transaction test, and so on. Because the
employees might be geographically dispersed, so are the agents that are performing
those tests.

See Outside-In Use Case

The outside-in use case or the Customer Digital Experience (CDX) use case is
applicable to all companies that are delivering services to their users or customers and
want to provide them with a good and reliable digital experience.
Challenge
Imagine that an organization's business focuses on delivering a service or a SaaS
application to their customers. The customers could be coming from different parts of
the world and are consuming this service from a company's data center or a cloud. This
organization will be relying on some third-party components like internet infrastructure,
DNS providers, content providers, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation
providers, and so on. Because the organization aims to provide a good digital
experience, they would need an insight into how all the in-house and third-party
services are operating. Even though the organization does not have those third-party
components under control, they still need some insight since those components could
play a critical part of a good digital experience. Users do not care what is wrong with
the service delivery from a technical standpoint or where the root of the issue lies, they
just want a good digital experience. If the experience happens to be bad, then the first to
blame is usually the SaaS provider itself.

Solution
Cisco ThousandEyes is providing comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of the
digital experience that is provided to customers in real time. It works by performing
tests from various physical locations, where the customers are expected to consume the
service. These tests are designed to mimic the customer's usage and may include Layer
3 connectivity to the SaaS cloud, an HTTP server test to the SaaS application, or even
transaction tests like logging in the application and performing a certain action. These
tests are not only monitoring the performance and digital experience of the SaaS
application itself but are monitoring the third-party components as well. Cisco
ThousandEyes operates in real time and tries to detect an issue before the customers
even notices and start complaining. After an issue is detected, the expected procedure is
to follow the evidence-and-escalate model.