Applications were annoyingly slow, pipes were full, and the hospital was inching toward buying new, expensive connections to keep up with the demand for bandwidth. But before paying the phone company, Burch agreed to try out network-monitoring software created by a company called Packeteer.
What he found was a surprise: in the first 18 hours that Burch used the software, file-swapping services like Kazaa made more than 1,100 attempts to use the company's network. Even more surprising were the effects on the applications the company had already noted were a little slow. Burch found that when P2P networks weren't active, a routine but critical database information swap that had been taking nine hours to perform suddenly was done in an hour and a half. It was a wake-up call, he said.
"We saw that there was a huge problem that we knew existed, but we hadn't known how to remedy it," Burch said. "We'd been fighting a losing battle."
As has been the case with other companies trying out new network and bandwidth monitoring tools, Burch's system woes weren't entirely tied to the presence of file-swapping software on company computers. But the discovery of activity that's taking up large amounts of bandwidth and exposing the company to potential legal liability is exactly the type of revelation that's persuading a growing number of companies to do something about file swapping.
This demand on the part of businesses for control over their networks is proving fertile ground for a new generation of bandwidth -- and network management companies, which are pitching their services as the answer to P2P, viruses and other "garbage software" ills. Among these companies are Packeteer, Allot Communications, AssetMetrix and a lengthening list of others.
