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Managed Services Increase Network Efficiency
As the telecommunications market becomes more competitive, managing and monitoring the health of your network is more critical than ever. Many companies are looking toward 3rd party managed services to assist with increasing network efficiency.
??Our company struggled with bandwidth control because we didn??t know how our end users were using our services,?? explained Bruce Rodgers, General Manager of Cumberland Telephone, an ILEC based in Cumberland, Iowa providing telephone and internet services. ??Due to unpredictable bandwidth usage, we ended up purchasing more bandwidth than we needed from our wholesale provider.??
Cumberland partnered with Last Mile Networks, a value-added reseller (VAR) based in Seward, Nebraska, to implement bandwidth controls, but even then ??Cumberland still had a problem with exceeding the burstable bandwidth they were purchasing from their suppliers,?? said James Noe, Chief Operating Officer of Last Mile Networks. ??We saw telltale signs of what was happening on the network but we couldn??t pinpoint the problem. We had to drill down and find a solution that would help Cumberland tailor their network to meet the needs of their end users.??
Last Mile Networks turned to its value-added distributor, Moonblink Communications, to utilize their Hosted Unified Threat Management (UTM) Services. Moonblink??s UTM service examines a number of usage parameters on the network to determine how much bandwidth is being consumed and by whom. When bandwidth demand exceeds normal limits, the network usage reports pinpoint the cause. In many instances, users unknowingly have viruses or malware consuming bandwidth. The UTM service identifies the problem and provides the details needed to shut down the user and correct the situation.
??By putting one of the UTM-based devices at the edge of the network, we can identify which of the clients are heavy bandwidth users and which have viruses and worms on their network. Notifications are provided and remedies are made available. Often times, problems are fixed before they are even apparent,?? said James Noe.
Since providers use an oversubscription model to operate profitably, the more subscribers sharing the bandwidth the higher the profit margin for the provider. One bad user can knock the whole profit model off base.
??By being able to identify how users are consuming the bandwidth and which users have viruses, service providers can cut down the bandwidth they purchase from wholesalers and grow their subscription rate,?? said Daniel Redmond, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Moonblink.
For the service provider, the UTM service also measures up time and availability of the wholesaler-provided network connection. If bandwidth flow declines, Last Mile Networks can quickly determine if the decrease is a connection issue between the wholesaler and service provider. This, too, saves money because wholesaler service level agreements (SLAs) guarantee bandwidth delivery. When those agreements are not met, service providers may be entitled to refunds.
The main benefit of Moonblink??s hosted managed services, which is distributed to VARs for deployment in service provider networks, is identifying end user bandwidth abuse, whether intentional or not. Moonblink??s managed services give the VARs the tools to examine the possible reasons network traffic might be congested.
??Without the UTM service, we were in something of a bandwidth vise,?? said Cumberland??s Bruce Rodgers. ??We knew when either side of the network was delivering less-than-ideal bandwidth, but we didn??t have a way to step in quickly and repair the problem. By utilizing the UTM services we are saving money, we have increased our network performance and our overall customer experience has improved.?? |
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