The new product helps track network problems and solve help desk issues better than ever before.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 9, 2008]

Xangati's Application Management 2.0 product, released today, was designed for the web 2.0 world, says David Messina, Xangati's vice president of marketing. It is designed to help service providers track application-layer problems at the individual level. If someone calls in to complain that something is not working, the application can help.

How?

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's name is derived from the Sanskrit word for community. In the case of Application Management 2.0, the software gathers freely available flow data covering metrics such as packets per second.

Messina likes specific demonstrations, and brings one up early in the interview. He's got fake but plausible data from a sample customer who's running an application called "potential spam" that uses all the upstream bandwidth (384 Kbps in this case) and communicates with IPs that the actual customer is unaware of. The help desk sees and understands the problem, communicates with the customer, sends anti-virus or anti-spam software to the customer, and the problem is solved.

Even legitimate applications, Messina says, may consume more bandwidth than users realize. Slingmedia's Slingbox can consume 1.5 Mbps on the upstream side if it is transmitting a high definition program, and that's more upstream than many home users have. XBOX live can also consume a lot of upstream bandwidth.

Application Management 2.0 allows the service provider to record and play back traffic data in real time. If a recurring problem is reported after hours, the help desk can set the application to record, say, between 8 PM and 10 PM and learn that someone is overloading a wireless access point with P2P software or XBOX live.

It's not DPI
But don't you need DPI to identify applications? "The DPI folks have led people astray," says Messina. "We can track XBOX live by IP address. We can track Bit Torrent by port address ranges."

Of course, he admits, some P2P applications hide their activities as web traffic, but for the purposes of this application—solving help desk problems, not enforcing policy over a network—a basic, less intrusive application than DPI suffices.

There are advantages to deploying Application Management 2.0 instead of DPI, he adds. The company calls its device, the Xangati Application Management 2.0 device, a "zero footprint device." Messina explains that this means the device does not sit inside the traffic flow, slowing down the network, but outside it, utilizing data that is already going over the network. Customers can install it immediately and evaluate it in a few weeks, he says, compared to months for the evaluation and deployment of DPI.

Furthermore, DPI is designed for network administrators, says Messina, whereas Application Management 2.0 is designed for the help desk. DPI products and devices are not user friendly.

Messina is optimistic about the possibilities of this product. "Now that we have a rich level of visibility, we're thinking about the things we can do to leverage this visibility and share these capabilities with end users."

Pricing and availability
The Xangati Application Management 2.0 device is available now starting at $21,000 for a 1,500 subscriber infrastructure.

For demos, Messina says customers can request a test drive of the device on the network of a comparable service provider. If you're interested in the product, I strongly recommend using a demo, because the interface is powerful and intuitive, and the product's value lies as much in its ease of use as in its tracking capabilities.

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