Province of British Columbia Trials Solana Network’s Technology to Address Management Challenges of their Converged IP Network

Ottawa, Canada – 
Feb 1, 2007

The government of BC trials Solana Network’s innovative Route Analytics based network management tool to address the challenges of managing its large province wide, converged IP network. The Province’s network operations team manages a large mission critical network and is continuously looking for solutions to assist with the challenge of supporting tens of thousands of users across the entire province.

Traditionally used to carry data traffic, IP networks are now being exploited to transmit mission critical applications, including VoIP, and have seen a massive increase in their complexity. Despite this increase in complexity, there is a gap in the capability of the tools that are required to manage efficient, cost effective, mission critical networks. Solana Networks has bridged the gap with its innovative network management solution that allows for fast, automated troubleshooting and diagnostics of IP networks.

“While there are many excellent products available, only a few stand out from the crowd. What makes SmartHawk different is its ability to non-intrusively monitor the network by listening to routing protocols and produce the results in a graphical representation of the network all in real time,” says Martin Webb, of the Province’s Workplace Technology Services (WTS). “The non-intrusive design alleviates the need to manage large databases of elements or conduct lengthy discoveries,” commented Webb.

Solana Networks was able to supply WTS with its Route Analytics solution allowing them, for the first time, to gain insight into the routing health of their complex network. Once deployed on the core of the network, SmartHawk listens to the routing protocol exchange between the routers and is instantly made aware of any routing changes, faults or even intermittent events providing for true real-time network monitoring and diagnostics. “The integrated fault and alarm management system assists in pinpointing routing problems, quickly and accurately,” said Webb.

The Province of BC is faced with the challenge of supporting over 50,000 government users on a province wide Layer 3 network comprised of more than 4,000 nodes. Monitoring the network and maintaining Quality of Service (QoS) is a formidable task. “The intelligence built into the ‘SmartView’ drawing engine of SmartHawk ensures that the network topology is represented in a clear, intuitive and usable fashion which allows for instant awareness of network health,” says Martin Webb. SmartHawk’s QoS features such as bandwidth utilization can be overlaid onto the visible topology making it easy to maintain network performance. “The solution also presents information on network congestion and bandwidth tracking providing alternate scenarios based on the network topology, as well as capacity planning,” added Webb.

“We are very pleased to be working with Martin and his team at WTS," says Nisan Rowhani, VP Product Management at Solana Networks, “they have been instrumental in providing valuable feedback that has gone into further enhancing the capabilities of our Route Analytics product suite and we look forward to continued collaboration.”

“While the current trend seems to be towards solutions that address as many aspects of network management as possible, the Province sees the value in Solana Networks simplicity of design approach. The end result is a product that targets a specific problem and does it well,” added Webb.

About Solana Networks

Solana Networks provides industry-leading software products and solutions for converged IP networks in Canada and internationally. Solana’s offerings are designed to improve the performance of mission-critical IP networks, reduce network downtime and enable new services. The company offers two intelligent IP network diagnostics products: FalconView aimed specifically at the small to medium business (SMB) and our flagship product SmartHawk targeted at the largest enterprise and ISP networks. Both products have unique capabilities for ensuring high network availability through rapid fault detection and root cause analysis. Leveraging an innovative technology called “Route Analytics” they provide detailed insight into IP network routing heath and various QoS issues.