| | Illinois Century Network
Illinois Century Network stays ahead of network problems by using WhatsUp Gold
An exciting technology initiative is underway in the state of Illinois to help provide easy and affordable access to the Internet for millions of users in the public sector.
Officials in Illinois understand the significance the Internet plays in how people search for information, conduct business, and generally communicate with each other. To help provide tools for Illinois organizations to maximize their Internet experience, the state launched the Illinois Century Network (ICN), which provides high-speed access to data, video, and audio communications to various public organizations including schools, libraries, state agencies, colleges, museums, and more.
Nine ICN technology centers were created throughout the state and staffed with network specialists to provide service at the regional level. These include providing Domain Name Services, IP addresses, connection consultation, equipment and circuit installation, troubleshooting, connection monitoring and support. Currently, ICN has connected more than 5,600 educational institutions and serves approximately two million Illinois citizens.
Because service is available to customers 24/7, ICN needed to ensure that its network was always available to customers. Bottom line: monitoring network availability was a top priority. We wanted to be proactive and not reactive when dealing with network problems, said Dave Habben, network specialist at ICN. We wanted to know before our customers that a site may be down so we could start the process of fixing the problem. That s why we began to look at network monitoring tools. One of the monitoring tools that was selected for use by the staff in the regional technology centers is WhatsUp Gold from Ipswitch, Inc. WhatsUp Gold is a software solution that maps, monitors, notifies, and reports on the status of devices on a company s computer network. It provides a detailed view of a network to help its administrators better understand and manage network resources. When a device or service is down, WhatsUp Gold can launch programs and/or send an alarm via e-mail, pager, desktop, or voice so that corrective actions may be taken either manually or automatically with minimal or no interruption of service.
ICN has deployed one copy of WhatsUp Gold at each of the nine technology centers and is using it to monitor their Cisco routers and DNS servers. In fact, ICN has been a loyal user of WhatsUp Gold since version 4.0. The software currently ships at version 7.0 and ICN has continued to upgrade at each phase as new feature enhancements continue to make WhatsUp Gold an even more effective product.
The ease of use of WhatsUp Gold and the Web interface are a big plus for us, said Habben. For locations that only have a dial-up connection, administrators don t have to load any special interface to see if a device is up or down. That s a real time-saving benefit.
Habben explains that ICN uses WhatsUp Gold s Web-based interface and its scripting capability the most because it allows ICN to build a monitoring overview of the network by creating a list of how many devices are up or down at each location.
WhatsUp Gold s availability reports are also very helpful to us as we can see from day-to-day if there s a site that s experiencing low availability. The site may be responding most of the time, so it won t get flagged, but the availability reports let us know that we need to keep an eye on it, said Habben.
For the millions of Illinois citizens who rely on the ICN as their gateway to the Internet, ICN s diligence in providing near perfect up-time for the network is greatly appreciated. With help from WhatsUp Gold, we re enjoying a great reputation with our customers because we know what s going on with our network, said Habben. That alone is worth the cost of the product.
If you would like more information about Illinois Century Network, please visit the Web site at www.illinois.net.
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