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The latest News and Information on IT Networks and related technologies.

IPAM Site Mapping: Give Your Subnets a Home

Without site context, your 5-minute fix becomes a 30-minute hunt through spreadsheets and Slack channels while users wait. This isn’t just inconvenient—it’s expensive. Every minute of downtime costs your business, and every minute spent playing IP detective is a minute not spent solving the actual problem. As networks scale across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, this lack of infrastructure context creates real operational pain for your team.

What Are Packet Bursts: Causes, Fixes & How to Find Them

Have you ever been in the middle of an important video call, only for it to glitch or freeze out of nowhere? Or did an application suddenly slow down right when you needed it most? These frustrating moments can often be caused by something hidden in the background: packet bursts. But what exactly are packet bursts, and why do these sudden surges in data traffic catch you off guard when your network seems steady? Are they just random spikes in the data flow, or is there something deeper causing them?

Streamlining the Complexity of SD-WAN Deployments With DX NetOps Topology

If you're feeling like your network operations just keep getting more complicated, you're not wrong. One of the core promises of cloud models was improved simplicity. However, the ensuing reality for your network operations teams has been anything but simple. Suddenly, users and applications are everywhere. Traditional, on-premises equipment now coexists with software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs), cloud-hosted resources, and hybrid connections that hop across public and private networks.

With AI, You're Gonna Have to Manage Your (Massive) Energy Use in SPM

Forget boring spreadsheets. Strategic portfolio management (SPM) isn't just about ticking boxes. It’s the big boss plan that makes sure every penny spent and every project your company starts points towards the main goal. It's your company's smart GPS, guiding you through the AI energy maze. When it comes to AI's power hunger, SPM is a knight in shining armor. It helps leaders get smart, making sure they grab all the fancy tech without trashing the world.

From Burnout to Believer: Why Aaron Betts Came Back Stronger

In this episode of Now That’s IT, Aaron Betts shares his remarkable journey—from launching his first MSP in 2005 and losing it all during the financial crisis, to taking a corporate detour, burning out, and ultimately returning to lead Intelesys as President. Aaron opens up about the hard-earned lessons of entrepreneurship, the shift from break/fix to managed services, and how a life-altering health scare reshaped his leadership style. He shares how he's rebuilding company culture, redefining success, and guiding his MSP toward a $10M vision—all while empowering his team to think bigger.

Kentik Cause Analysis in 60 Seconds

In a world where network traffic can suddenly spike, manually sifting through flow data is often a daunting task. Kentik AI's new Cause Analysis simplifies troubleshooting by quickly identifying changes in traffic by application, IP, ASN, or service. With just a few clicks, Cause Analysis helps you compare time periods, understand traffic shifts, and detect changes in your network. Kentik: Take the hard work out of running your network.

Cloudflare's DNS Downtime: Why BGP Hijacks Were Never to Blame

On July 14, Cloudflare’s popular public DNS service (known as 1.1.1.1) suffered an outage lasting over two hours. As rumors swirled about the cause, we were the first to push back on the theory that a BGP hijack had caused the outage. In fact, the hijack was actually a consequence. How did we know this so early when other internet watchers did not? We’ll discuss in this post.

Building a bulletproof network disaster recovery plan

Imagine it’s 2am. A core switch fries because of a sudden power surge. Most of your users wake up to a blank screen. Your team scrambles: Where’s the backup configuration? Who knows the last working state? Hours pass, productivity tanks, support calls flood in, and costs stack up by the minute. This isn’t a theoretical horror story. According to Gartner, the average cost of network downtime still hovers around $5,600 per minute, or over $300,000 per hour.