Halloween is upon us and it’s time to shift into horror mode. In truth, people love to be scared—when they know it isn’t real. Movie franchises like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th have been running consistently for decades. Directors like John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham are masters of the genre, giving viewers a chance to immerse themselves in fright for a few hours before getting back to reality.
While Halloween comes once a year, Network Engineers and IT professionals face far more terrifying situations everyday.
Let’s take a walk down the darkest alley of some scary network nightmare scenarios you may face and see how to make them as controllable as turning off a classic horror movie.
Somebody is Watching You - Identiying ARP Attacks
Have you ever felt like someone is watching you? It’s pretty unsettling. When it comes to your network there are countless cyber criminals spying on you with an ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) attack. If you can’t analyze 100% of network traffic in real time, it can be almost impossible to spot the attackers who are spoofing ARP messages. If they creep into your environment, they can eavesdrop, siphon and even kill network traffic whenever they want.
We recently had a client contact us and say he was dealing with odd network activity. His CPU was running high and MAC loopback errors were being detected. We installed a network TAP, which made it easier for him to see the exact context of the potential ARP poisoning. In the end, this approach helped ensure greater security and eliminated the hidden set of eyes.
Haunted by a Ghost - Troubling VoIP Issues
Sometimes it might seem like your communications system is haunted. Whether it’s a ghost echoing your every word or flickering words suggestive of someone possessed, you know something’s wrong. One thing is for sure, if you can’t find the source of the problem—it could start scaring away anyone contacting your customer service department. For a growing company, nothing could be scarier than that.
VoIP echoing is a fairly common phenomenon, but one of our clients called to say that it was becoming unbearable. Customers were hanging up and employees didn’t have a reliable way to collaborate. They couldn’t hunt down the root cause of the echoing – it was like trying to spot a ghost. By using a network TAP to fully analyze call legs, our client was able to isolate the culprit in no time.
Attackers Lurking in the Shadows - Identifying Bad Packets in the Network
If you’ve ever been to a haunted house, you know that all of the scare tactics are based on the element of surprise. If the lights were all turned on and the characters were in plain sight, you probably wouldn’t be so scared. Bad packets might be hiding in your network traffic just waiting to reveal themselves and wreak havoc.
A client recently complained about his network performance—everything was running slowly, dragging performance metrics down along with revenue. Searching for the bad packets was like trying to find the electrical box during a power outage without a flashlight. However, when he deployed a network TAP to gather real-time RTCP reports, he could quickly identify where bad packets were threatening performance. Now, he can safely say that the lights never go out inside his network.
Fear of the Unknown - Benchmarking Skinny Applications
The horror genre practically invented shock value – scaring people with looming threats and surprise attacks. When benchmarking Skinny applications, network administrators know that it’s only a matter of time before they run into some sort of issue—they just don’t know where or when.
One of our clients implemented Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP) to minimize his costs and simplify his VoIP infrastructure. But the experience wasn’t as positive as he hoped – issues kept cropping up causing the team to scramble for a fix. Without visibility, he had no idea when problem would occur or how to fix it. By using a network TAP to collect data on either side of the SBC, he was able to gain 100% visibility into VoIP traffic and manage his SCCP applications without so many problems.
Ghouls, Goblins and Pranksters - Who is Messing with the Power?
Everything is wired correctly and appliances are up and running—so why is the power cutting out? Flickering lights are a mainstay in the horror genre and network outages are just as scary in the IT world.
A network administrator called us in to diagnose an intermittent power issue. We tapped multiple links in the network to isolation the problem but had no luck finding the source of the problem so we moved on to a physical inspection of the environment. That’s when we found it – they had a 300-foot cable running under a carpet to power his network. Network outages are scary, but in this case there’s an easy fix. The longer your power cable (and the more it’s stepped on), the weaker your network will be. When our client stabilized the connection, he was able to end this network nightmare.
Brains, Blood and Guts are Big on Halloween - What's Disgustingly Terrifying in Networking?
When it comes to networking, there are plenty of physical issues that can cause electrical and connectivity issues for network administrators.
One of our clients called in and mentioned some dropped packets in his network. This seemed like an average problem, but he soon discovered the terrible root cause. If you can believe it, mold was growing on his network fibers, causing all kinds of connectivity issues. This is the kind of issue you have to see to believe, so keep an eye on your network cabling and make sure you don’t run into this network nightmare.
Scary Stories Aren't Just for Halloween Anymore
Halloween is a great time to enjoy scary stories, at least for a month or so. But for network administrators, there are plenty of nightmares that happen on a daily basis. If you can relate, we would love to hear from you.
Click to Tweet, and tell us the scariest network situation you've come across.
