l CASE STUDY l
CN Keeps Trains and Network
Operating Efficiently Using
NETSCOUT Solutions
Overview
Problem
CN requires a reliable network and
applications to run all aspects of its railroad
business.
Business Challenge
They were experiencing application
performance problems and response time
delays and were unable to pinpoint the
root cause.
NETSCOUT Solution
The railway leveraged the analysis in the
nGenius solution to identify bandwidth
abuse by non-business-critical applications
and software upgrades to thousands of
desktops as the cause of the degradations.
Business Value
Since the deployment of the nGenius
solution, CN has been able to reduce the
number of performance management
issues, including troubleshooting
application performance problems, capacity
planning, and collaborative planning for
application rollouts.
Customer Profile
CN is one of the largest railroads in North America, operating a network of 19,200 route miles of
track in the United States and Canada. It is the only transcontinental railroad in North America
with a network that spans Canada and mid-America, from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to
the Gulf of Mexico. CN derives its revenue from the movement of raw resources and finished
goods, including petroleum and chemicals, grain and fertilizers, coal, metals and minerals, forest
products, and automotive.
The company’s IT network supports more than 22,000 employees who rely on the network to
track shipments in real time, process customer service transactions, fulfill order requests and
ensure that the company’s extensive, automated rail system operates efficiently and safely.
The company uses a variety of NETSCOUT Intelligent Data Sources in combination with several
nGenius analysis modules to monitor their wide area network (WAN) links and 1,800-1,900 Cisco
switches and routers.
Approximately 25 people from a variety of IT groups use the nGenius® solution on a regular
basis, with seven of them considered experts. The network services team monitors over 200
applications, many of them custom or complex applications for unique railway operation services.
In addition, the network services team has established six Quality of Service (QoS) levels to
prioritize the railway’s business-critical and latency-sensitive applications such as the train controls
system, reservation system, Systems, Applications, Products (SAP) and Voice over IP (VoIP).
Improving Application Performance and Organizational Processes
Since deploying the nGenius solution, CN has been able to improve performance issues and
organizational processes, including troubleshooting application performance problems, capacity
planning and collaborative planning for application rollouts. For example, CN’s networking group
has used the nGenius solution with its strategically placed nGenius appliances to:
ENTERPRISE
l CASE STUDY l CN Keeps Trains and Network Operating Efficiently Using NETSCOUT Solutions
• Test the network impact of a Lotus Notes®
upgrade with the application team prior to
full deployment to thousands of desktops
• Troubleshoot quality problems during a
trial VoIP deployment
• Resolve a situation where a large number
of desktop computers were unable to
correctly map network drives by using
the nGenius soution’s packet capture and
analysis capabilities to identify a hidden
client-server miscommunication
• Reduce uncertainty regarding bandwidth
capacity by using the more granular oneminute views of application traffic enabled
by NETSCOUT
Enhanced Collaboration Between
IT Groups Leads to Proactive
Management of Network Activity
The nGenius solution enhances collaboration
between CN’s various IT groups. Not long ago,
people were coming to the network services
team complaining the network was slow.
Now they’re starting to come to them to see
if they can get an nGenius report specific to
their application or situation before assigning
responsibility. And, better still, they’re even
beginning to proactively ask network services
to verify that there is adequate bandwidth
to complete network-intensive tasks without
adversely affecting critical business services.
For example, the applications group wanted
to upgrade the Lotus Notes client to the
latest version. With 100-120MB needing to
be pushed out to 15,000 PCs, the application
group decided it should first check the effect
on the network before proceeding with
the update. They scheduled a limited test
and asked the network services group to
determine the network impact.
Network services used the nGenius solution
for automated anomaly detection capabilities
to prove that there was no significant variance
on the network. The nGenius solution learns
a network’s, and its associated applications,
behavior patterns and builds a statistical
model which it then uses as the baseline to
compare current activity against. Because
the test update did not trip the solution’s
dynamically determined thresholds, the team
was confident that the updates would not
significantly affect the network and was able
to give the okay to proceed.
In another situation, a bunch of PCs were
taking 30 to 45 minutes to boot up. The PC
group suspected it was a problem with the
server, so the network services team did
a packet trace of one of the PCs making
the request to the specific server and was
able to confirm the PC group’s suspicions
unequivocally. It turns out the PCs were timing
out trying to contact the server because they
were not able to map their drives correctly.
determine whether or not the deployment
was successful. Without a means to directly
quantify the network traffic utilizing each
classification, the network services team
would have been left to guess whether their
prioritization schemes were achieving the
desired balance, were unduly impacting or
restricting lower priority traffic, or were being
compromised by improperly configured
network devices.
“Our business operates in real time with
extensive automation, so we depend
heavily on the corporate network remaining
responsive. The number of remote sites and
distinct classifications of business services we
monitor requires a reliable and highly granular
network monitoring system. The nGenius
solution gives us the visibility we need to
serve our user base and keep mission-critical
business functions running at high efficiency,”
says a senior network engineer with CN’s
Telecom Engineering Team.
One-Minute Resolution Provides
Essential Granularity
Support for VoIP and QoS
Implementations
CN is also starting to deploy VoIP (voice over
IP) in a limited capacity and has probes to
monitor and detect converged voice/data
traffic at various locations. Recently, CN’s
network services used the nGenius solution
to troubleshoot phone problems at the
president’s office. Because voice traffic is
highly delay sensitive, the team decided to
implement quality of service categories to
prioritize the voice traffic. NETSCOUT’s QoS
management capabilities structure and
monitor specific Differentiated Services Code
Points (DSCP) that are used to prioritize traffic
flows, allowing the nGenius solution to display
in-depth graphical real-time historical views
and reports of the associated application
traffic by QoS class. As a result, CN was able
to confirm that the network was correctly
configured and the QoS service was working
properly, and the president was able to make
clear, jitter-free phone calls.
With a more comprehensive understanding
of the impact and effectiveness of QoS
traffic management on the total network
environment, CN can now better ensure
that its networked applications and services
are meeting business priorities. While
planning a QoS implementation is difficult, it
is often an even more daunting challenge to
Another situation in which the nGenius
solution proved valuable involved a couple
sites in of The Netherlands that were
complaining about network performance.
The network services team used the nGenius
solution to prove unequivocally that they
needed more bandwidth.
While the 15-minute average views showed
50 percent to 55 percent usage, in reality
the peaks were closer to 85 percent or 90
percent consumption. Using the nGenius
solution, they were able to provide the users
a more accurate picture of their bandwidth
usage and give them the necessary
ammunition to push the upgrade request
through the approval process.
According to the senior network engineer with
CN’s Telecom Engineering Team,
“The nGenius solution enabled us
to easily justify bandwidth requests.
In this case, we were able to say
explicitly, You’ve only got this much
bandwidth for your overhead
and that is what is affecting your
performance.”
Given the sophisticated nature of CN’s
network and the IT organization’s goals to be
more proactive in optimizing the network and
cutting resolution times, CN requires great
intelligence in their approach to application
and network performance management.
With the full range of capabilities the
nGenius solution provides, CN has access
to accurate, reliable alarms with actionable
data to optimize delivery of business services
over their networks and stay ahead of
performance threats.
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ECS_014-15 07/2015