Reid Burch, network
services manager for the Promina Southern Regional Health System hospital near
Atlanta, was having a problem
with slow networks. Applications were sluggish, bandwidth was strained to
the max and the hospital was about to invest in a costly upgrade to the
system. But first, Burch agreed to try out network-monitoring software
created by a company called Packeteer.
 What he
found was a surprise: In the first 18 hours that Burch used the software,
file-swapping services like Kazaa made more than 1,100 attempts to use the
company's network. Even more surprising were the effects on the
applications the company had already noted were a little slow. Burch found
that when P2P networks weren't active, a routine but critical database
information swap that had been taking nine hours to perform suddenly was
done in an hour and a half. It was a wake-up call, he said.
Companies also worry about security
implications for file-swapping. Many people who use P2P software aren't
technically sophisticated and might accidentally expose vulnerable parts
of their computer or network. For Burch's hospital and other health care
organizations, which are universally trying to secure their network
privacy in line with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act, that's a serious concern.
The companies behind those tools have several
different means of approaching the problem. Monitoring and audit companies
like AssetMetrix scan corporate networks for every piece of software
located on PCs, finding file-swapping software, spyware, instant messaging
programs and everything else that's living on corporate hard drives. Those
reports help administrators or other consultants track down unauthorized
code.
Packeteer, Allot and others go one step further. They
scan to see which software applications are using a network, and they
control the amount of bandwidth that's allocated to each application. That
means that, as some universities do, companies can shut down altogether or
allotted just a trickle of bandwidth to software like Kazaa.
|
Allot CEO Narayanan believes that we
are in the early days of an education campaign for companies. He
feels these issues of potential legal liability and destructive effects on
corporate network resources will be taken more seriously once the word gets
around.
Source: news.com
