Two options to prevent march madness from dunking your network

Two Options to Prevent March Madness from

Dunking your Network

It’s almost March Madness time again and everyone’s favourite college hoops tournament is set to slam all records for online video consumption. It should come as no surprise to IT managers that while your users might look like they’re intently focused on a conference call, they’re really plugged into their third Sweet 16 game of the day and crushing your network in the process.

Stats from Turner Sports show that during the first week alone of March Madness in 2014, there were over 51 million video streams compared to 49 million for the entire in 2013. We’re going to see that jump again this year, and with many of the first and second round games occurring during regular business hours, it will have repercussions for corporate networks everywhere. A survey from SOASTA found that 14% of March Madness fans will follow the games during conference calls, 12% during meetings, and 4% will even sneak a peek during a performance review. Live streams from mobile devices were up 74% last over the first week of the 2013 tournament.

Your Options to Prevent March Madness from Dunking Your NetworkLetting employees partake in live streaming events can lead to network congestion and hurt the performance of business-critical applications if left unmanaged. When it comes to protecting the network you’ve got a couple of options:

Option 1 – The Manute Bol (aka – Blocking Traffic)This one is a popular choice for non-basketball fans and party poppers alike. It takes a security style approach to the problem and blocks streaming video altogether. This binary perspective will solve the problem but it can present a few challenges that can outweigh the benefits.

Your users will be pissed at you and make fun of you behind your back

The diehards will just take extended breaks to watch and be even less productive

You’ll have a hard time blocking recreational video without also blocking important stuff

Option 2 – The Chris Paul (aka – Directing Traffic)This one takes a more intelligent approach to address the streaming video issue. Instead of outright blocking all March Madness traffic, you employ bandwidth policies to restrict (but not block) the streaming traffic. This approach has a few notable benefits for companies:

Your users will love youUsers can stream coverage but never

consume more than the allowed bandwidthYour business apps will have guaranteed

bandwidth that can’t be cannibalised.

Your Playbook for Intelligently Managing March Madness Traffic Here are a few quick tips every IT pro needs to know to manage March

Madness streaming using EXINDA solutions.

Set Policies to Control March Madness StreamingIt’s easy using EXINDA Network Orchestrator to set bandwidth policies by application, user, time of day, and more. The challenge with limiting March Madness streaming on the corporate network is that so many different sites and mobile apps offer live feeds that it’s difficult to monitor all of them. That’s where creating a policy using the Application Group feature comes in handy. Thankfully, EXINDA comes out of the box with a pre-defined Streaming group.By using the Streaming group in a policy, you can limit the amount of bandwidth that streaming video and audio can consume on the network. In the example policy below, you can see that only 1% of the network’s bandwidth is allowed for streaming applications.

Set a Policy to Limit Streaming During Peak HoursIf you want to limit the amount of sports streaming happening during peak business hours, yet allow employees to get their fix after-hours, simply set-up a schedule for when you’d like your policy to run. EXINDA Network Orchestrator comes with a pre-set schedule called Work Hours, which is defined as Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 6 pm. In the example below, the Control March Madness policy is set to limit streaming during Work Hours.

With many more hours of streaming ahead between now and the Championship game, network managers need to find a way to keep the basketball bonanza at bay.

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