APRIL 15, 2009

3 Reasons Application-Aware Network Equipment Fails to Perform in the Real World and How to Prevent It

UPDATE: In Spring of 2010 BreakingPoint unveiled the pioneering Cyber Tomography Machine to help you with problems such as the ones described in this post. Read more.

You have probably been in the situation at one point where a product simply does not work when put into a real-world scenario. It might be as simple as that new hammock you put on your porch (long story) or high-performance network equipment. In both cases it benefits everyone to test the product under a real-world scenario prior to actual deployment, but as we've discussed on this blog numerous times, that simply is not happening in all cases.

Responsibly testing for real-world networks demands realism, transparency and simplicity from network equipment testing. When you are not testing in this manner you risk failures when the equipment is deployed in the real world. It is a topic we are certainly passionate about and if you are attending Cisco Toolapalooza you have the opportunity to attend the talk by Dennis Cox, our co-founder and CTO, "3 Reasons Application-Aware Network Equipment Fails to Perform in the Real World and How to Prevent It".

In his presentation Dennis gives practical information including common reasons for equipment failure and strategies for efficiently conducting meaningful Layer 2-7 testing. Having watched Dennis present many times, I know this will be an entertaining and educational talk.

Here is the poster that was created for the event, I thought this was the best way to share the details: