How Nebula helps admins locate bottlenecks and ensures that engineers are working on the right switch

One of the problems a lot of network administrators have is locating bottlenecks. And once they have identified where the problem lies, they then have the issue of actually finding that device, which it may surprise you to hear, is not always that easy.

Even when a network is carefully and intelligently designed, it’s still possible for a pinch point to occur where there is more traffic than had been anticipated. Quite often the problem will be centred on a particular switch or connection. But while the location of affected users who complain of inconsistent response times or latency will give you an idea, it won’t always be easy to identify exactly where the problem lies.

This is one of the main benefits of Nebula – our cloud-based management platform. With Nebula, it’s possible to see the levels of traffic moving across all the switches and ports. This makes it much easier to identify any bottlenecks. But then comes another challenge. In networks of a significant size, where multiple switches may be deployed in one or more racks within a computer room, it won’t always be easy to identify exactly which physical switch is the ‘problem switch’.

To overcome this, within Nebula, we have a switch locator function. When the administrator turns this on, a small LED lights up on the physical switch. This ensures that the engineer who is sent to re-cable or replace the switch works on the right device, that no time is wasted, and that the bottleneck – or other issue – is dealt with as swiftly as possible.

If you’d like to know more about Nebula and how it can be used to monitor and manage our switches, please contact your local Zyxel Networks partner or Zyxel Networks office.