Improve Control Over IP VPN Environments with Dynamic Prioritization

The goal of Class of Service (CoS) is for customers and their users to be able to work efficiently and have superior, consistent application performance. In traditional network environments, CoS management can take days to resolve, and changing CoS assignments can take weeks. Now you can provide that desired efficiency and consistency with Dynamic Prioritization for IP VPN from tw telecom, where CoS adjustments can be handled instantly.

Steve Jacknow, Senior Sales Engineering Manager — Indirect Channel with tw telecom, discusses this new feature of the Intelligent Network and how it puts even more network control in the customer’s hands.

Giving customers more control over CoS

Jacknow explains that throwing more bandwidth at a CoS problem isn’t always the answer.

“There are times you really need control of CoS,” Jacknow says. Most enterprises strive to maintain adequate bandwidth for business as usual. For predictable activity and events, having available capacity is generally enough. However, events that can commonly cause demand problems include implementation of cloud services, implementation of an application that requires additional voice services, or an industry event that changes the usual traffic patterns.

Jacknow explains, “At those times, having CoS policies in place ensures that the highest-level data will get through while the problem is resolved.”

But what happens when your priorities change unexpectedly?

Sometimes, enterprises can encounter serious network congestion or large bursts of traffic. These changes can be caused by activities as ordinary as data backup and replication, new software deployments, and application updates. Or they might be caused by a larger event — think a regional emergency such as a hurricane in a coastal area.

In those cases, says Jacknow, “you need to be able to adjust not only how your internal devices prioritize traffic, but also how your network handles those priorities.”

Dynamic Prioritization works with Intelligent Network

Creating the right balance between the internal devices and external network can be challenging, because IT staff must set internal policies and also pre-set policies with the network provider. When the unexpected happens, the provider policy can attempt to adapt and relieve congestion, but the provider doesn’t always know the customer’s new needs and often the policy falls short.

But your customers do know what they need. And through the Enhanced Management feature of tw telecom‘s Intelligent Network, they can get end-to-end, on-demand information that lets them know when to make the call to change CoS priorities.

At that point, Dynamic Prioritization makes it easy for customers to make immediate changes to their CoS policies and categorize network traffic the way they want. As part of the Intelligent Network, the Dynamic Prioritization interface is extremely intuitive. Through the MyPortal interface, customers can establish a policy change that affects all sites, several sites at once, or only selected sites — either at once in the case of a sudden event or on specific dates, well in advance of an expected event.

And if the customer still needs more bandwidth for a time despite the CoS policies, Dynamic Capacity^® can help fulfill that need — instantly.

Which customers are a good fit for Dynamic Prioritization?

Jacknow says Channel Partners can bring real value to customers who have IP VPN environments that they adjust frequently. For customers who are keenly aware of how the network is performing and want as much control as possible, Dynamic Prioritization could be an excellent fit.

When talking to customers, Jacknow advises Channel Partners to:

• Gauge the interest level based on how closely the customer is managing the network.
• Ask what happens to the customer if a critical application doesn’t work as it should — are there significant financial implications?
• Find out how dynamic the customer’s network is and whether the network has a lot of change.

Jacknow comments that customers could use burstable Internet services to deal with sudden network congestion, but that those services lack the predictability and cost control that customers get with services like Dynamic Capacity^® and Dynamic Prioritization.

“People who rely on their network don’t like surprises,” Jacknow says. “We’re all about predictability and control.”

Putting predictability and power into customers’ hands makes them successful — and brings success to Channel Partners, too!