HP Network Direr Software Products manual Issues with Managing a Multi-Site Network

682CHAPTER 17: USING 3COM NETWORK DIRECTOR ON A MULTI-SITE NETWORK

physically located, or the PC that runs an application is located, is known as the local site. Other sites are known as remote sites.

Similarly, devices that are located at the local site are known as local devices, while devices that are located at remote sites are known as remote devices.

Issues with Managing a Multi-Site Network

Due to their differences, managing a multi-site network is not as straightforward as managing a network whose components are restricted to a single site. These differences result in several issues specific to managing multi-site networks, some of which are:

■The geographical separation of the sites means that device failure, physical network changes and, in some cases, device reconfigurations require either site visits or a network manager at each site to resolve them.

■The links between sites, WAN links, are generally slower than the links within sites, LAN links. These cause larger latency between sites that is normally seen within a single site. This may cause problems with time-sensitive data, such as VoIP traffic.

■Due to their monetary cost, WAN links are often utilized at near to their full capacity. Additional traffic directed to such WAN links can result in the links becoming less reliable than normal, with the routers at either end dropping some of the packets destined for the link. This can potentially disrupt the performance of the applications in your network that run across multiple sites.

■The links between sites may be installed, owned and managed by a service provider, leaving you with little or no control over them.

3Com Network 3Com Network Director monitors and manages the devices in your Director Support for network from a single PC. As a result, when running in a multi-site Multi-Site Networks network there are some issues that can arise with the default

configuration of 3Com Network Director:

■Due to the additional latency caused by WAN links, discovery of remote sites may take much longer than the discovery of the local site.

■One of the attributes that 3Com Network Director uses to monitor the status of devices in your network is their responsiveness (this is shown by the IP Ping Service monitor). When monitoring remote devices the additional latency caused by the WAN links may result in these devices