CIOIN

As every network professional knows, users frequently complain about a slow network when it's often an application that's sluggish. It's difficult to determine the cause of poor application performance, however, because it can be caused by everything from bad code to overworked servers to bandwidth that's not up to par. The time it takes to chase down the problem can be quite costly: employees are unable to work efficiently, business processes are bogged down, users are annoyed and even customers are negatively impacted.

Since poor application performance impacts user satisfaction and even business productivity, network professionals must deal with these issues rapidly and efficiently. The faster the root cause of a problem is identified, the faster it can be fixed...and damaging impacts on business mitigated.

When it comes to troubleshooting application performance issues, there are two steps you can take to make diagnosis easier, faster and more accurate. First, understand the common causes of application performance problems; and, second, use the right tool to diagnose them. This paper will outline some of these causes and will explain why having the right diagnostic tool can enable network professionals to quickly identify and resolve a problem.

"...40% of Packeteer/NWW survey respondents said that application performance degradation had either a high or very high impact on individual employment productivity..." 1 Mary Petrosky "Understanding the true costs of application performance problems" Network World Special Report.