The digital twin as a living and breathing network diagram

[rakhirhif8963]

06.02.2023
Delivering intent-based network observability is a growing challenge for NetOps teams. Andrew Froehlich, president of consulting firm West Gate Networks, talks to Network Computing about how a digital twin of the network creates a living, breathing network diagram with the benefits of preparing network changes, troubleshooting, and ensuring compliance, resulting in increased confidence and speed of implementation.

Understanding and validating network intent is becoming increasingly complex with multi-cloud architectures and multi-layered virtualization. To better understand how network traffic flows from one system to another—and anticipate changes in traffic behavior as additions/changes occur—a network digital twin can help deliver this functionality with advanced capabilities that allow NetOps teams to stay informed about how changes to the network may impact application data flows.

Challenges NetOps Teams Face When bosnia and herzegovina mobile database Network Intent
Today, most NetOps teams use a combination of static physical and logical network diagrams, as well as knowledge gained and accumulated from working with the network over time. However, problems arise when diagrams are not properly maintained, or when NetOps employees leave the organization or move on to other jobs.

While there are tools to create automated network diagrams, they often lack the level of intelligence and granularity needed to drill down into traffic flow patterns as changes occur. This is especially true for increasingly complex network architectures that use hybrid or multi-cloud networks and distribute multiple services across multiple servers in the same or different data centers.