Bitcricket

Consulting and Services

Engage Bitcricket to solve your toughest networking problems and put 25 years of experience to work for you. We understand that end-user satisfaction is critical to running a successful organization and offer a wide variety of services custom tailored your needs. All engagements are priced simply and attractively by the day + travel. A typical on-site engagement runs from two to three days depending of the complexity of the problem. Longer term arrangements are available on a first-come, first serve basis.

Our policy is to work closely with you on-site as we investigate, analyze, find issues, and make suggestions. We'll follow-up with a written report summarizing our findings. We believe in 100% knowledge transfer of not only our findings, but troubleshooting and analysis techniques as well.

The following on-site consulting and analysis services are available:

• Application and Infrastructure Troubleshooting
• Network Health Check and Baselining
• VoIP Troubleshooting and Validation
• Wireless LAN Troubleshooting and Environmental RF Spectrum Analysis

For further questions or to book, please email scott@bitcricket.com.

Application and Infrastructure Troubleshooting

Today's complex web-based multi-tier applications involving anything from clients to back-end load balancers, application servers, and database engines can make it difficult to pinpoint exact causes of application slow down, connection and disconnection problems, print job issues, and a array of other maladies. Is it the network or the server? The client or the VPN? Hiccups in spanning tree or routing protocols? QoS schemes not working as expected? Overloaded WAN circuits or inefficient application turn times and data volume?

We work with you on-site for 100% knowledge transfer during our troubleshooting process. The latest "deep packet inspection" tools are used to get to the root cause of problems. Multi-point analysis in your network is key. We work in the data center, wiring closets, edge, remote, and even right next to your end-users at their workspace, observing what they doing, performing precise timing, and capturing flow analysis of that user/application.

In the case of data centers and remote sites or wiring closets, we work with your engineers to determine the optimal spanning or tapping technique and the right data to collect and analyze. As a bonus, we will assist you in determining the optimal placement for probes, performance monitors, distributed analyzers, and other data collecting appliances as well as the optimal data you should be collecting and analyzing.

Network Health Check and Baselining

Is your network running at top efficiency? Are there unwanted protocols or broadcasts propagating your network? Is now a good time to baseline your throughput, latency, server response time, etc. while things are working reasonably well? Can your protocols, browser, queuing strategies, firewall, or VPN be optimized for better performance?

Investing in a health check now to spot potential anomalies before they escalate into major problems, or to baseline your network and take a snapshot of good connections, application flows, file transfers, web page interactions, DHCP and DNS server interactions, database queries, and more, will pay huge dividends down the road should problems arise.

Bitcricket will work with you to map out a health check strategy, come on-site to learn your wired or wireless network, applications, and server (good infrastructure connectivity documentation is a plus). We will collect data and provide a written report summarizing our findings. As with our infrastructure troubleshooting, we will assist you in determining the optimal placement for probes, performance monitors, and distributed analyzers.

Wireless LAN Troubleshooting and Environmental RF Spectrum Analysis

If your wireless operation is less than satisfactory in terms of connection issues, performance, and reliability, we will help you identify and resolve troublesome problems by looking at the operation from both the packet perspective as well as the environmental factors such as attenuation and interference from other non-802.11 devices. Working on-site, we'll analyze exactly what the users and access points see from their physical locations.

Troubleshooting and optimizing the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) infrastructure is far more complex than Ethernet. We need to deal with spectrum, competing devices in the unlicensed band, and environmental factors for starters. Then there's authentication, association, encryption, and QoS for VoIP and other time-sensitive applications. On top of that, the media is being shared by multiple nodes akin to the old days of Ethernet hubs.

Bitcricket has extensive knowledge of 802.11 wireless operation and the best way to analyze it. Our founder has analyzed thousands of access points and clients in many different settings and has defined and tested wireless expert systems. Put our wireless expertise to work for you in resolving your toughest problems and helping to optimize your WLAN performance.

VoIP Troubleshooting and Validation

VoIP in converged wired and wireless networks has its own set of operational requirements to operate smoothly and problem free. Unlike cell phone users who give up voice quality for mobility, the majority of VoIP users are on stationary hand sets at their desk and expect landline quality. Even mobile VoIP users on the enterprise wireless LAN expect good quality of experience (QoE) as they move about.

Implementing a robust network with QoS (usually with a combination of policy and VLANs) end-to-end is only a start. One must ensure that other data or time-critical applications, such as streaming video, do not disrupt VoIP quality. Furthermore, complicating factors in signaling, call managers, and gateways can cloud the picture.

Bitcricket will help you resolve H.323, SIP, or Cisco Skinny (SCCP) problems, as well as VoIP call quality problems, by analyzing call flow and other data traffic from multiple points throughout the call path, from edge-to-core-to-edge. We will determine the impact (and validate your design at the same time) of data traffic, bandwidth, latency, and other factors on call quality. Another emerging and often overlooked problem is that some converged networks are so well tuned for voice that VoIP traffic is impacting mission-critical data applications, causing delay and packet loss. We'll also baseline your MOS/R-Factor scores during peak and off-peak times, and explain what MOS scores do NOT reveal in your specific implementation.