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Cloud Application Monitoring for Efficient Network Management in Public Schools

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

Topics in Computing and Information Technology-II

Tagged Division

Computing and Information Technology

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--30194

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/30194

Download Count

373

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Paper Authors

biography

John Pickard East Carolina University

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Dr. Pickard is an Assistant Professor at East Carolina University in the College of Engineering and Technology. He teaches undergraduate and graduate Information and Computer Technology (ICT) courses within the Department of Technology Systems. Dr. Pickard plays an active role in building positive and sustainable industry relationship between the college, local businesses, and industry partners.
Current industry recognized certifications include; Cisco Certified Network Professional, Microsoft Certificated Professional, EMC Information Storage and Management, IPv6 Forum Certified Engineer (Gold), IPv6 Forum Certified Trainer (Gold), and Cisco Certified Academy Instructor.
Dr. Pickard received his Ph.D. in Technology Management at Indiana State University. He also holds an MBA from Wayland Baptist University and a B.S. in Professional Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle University.
Research interests include: IPv6, IPv6 adoption, wireless sensor networks, and industry-academia partnerships.

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Dale Drummond East Carolina University

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Dale Drummond is an Undergraduate Student at East Carolina University in the College of Engineering and Technology. He is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Information and Computer Technology with a concentration in Computer Networking.
Mr. Drummond is currently Team Lead/Sr. Network Management Engineer at MCNC, the company which operates the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN).
Research interests include IPv6, IPv6 adoption, Application Performance Monitoring, DevOps, and Network Operations Optimization.

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Philip J. Lunsford II East Carolina University

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Phil Lunsford received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University. He is a registered professional engineer and is currently an Associate Professor at East Carolina University. His research interests include cyber security, telemedicine applications, network performance, and the cross-discipline application of technologies.

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Ciprian Popoviciu Nephos6, Inc.

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Dr. Ciprian Popoviciu, MBA, has over 20 years of experience working in various technical and leadership roles in the networking and cloud computing area. Prior to starting Nephos6 he managed the architecture team of Cisco’s Engineering Infrastructure Services organization where he defined the strategy and led the execution of the internal DC consolidation and transition to cloud. He is an industry recognized domain expert in IPv6 who, over the past 15 years worked on the strategy, architecture, implementation and validation of IPv6 adoption by large service providers and enterprises Worldwide. Ciprian worked with various governments on defining national level and agency level IPv6 strategies and standards. Ciprian authored two Cisco Press books and co-authored 5 IETF RFCs and multiple patents. Ciprian is an IPv6 Forum Fellow and a Cisco Champion. He is a frequent speaker to industry events and conferences and he is an active contributor to various technology and scientific publications.

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Abstract

With the increased movement of administrative, operations, and educational tools from on-premise resources to hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, K-12 and post-secondary schools and school administrators are placing increasing demands on the network, the applications being used, and the staff supporting those applications. As the importance of the network’s role in day-to-day education operations increases, new ways to understand how the network itself and the services provided over the network are performing are needed.

This paper will present the findings and quantifiable benefits observed by shifting from a traditional network monitoring approach to an application performance or User Experience approach. This novel approach aids school administrators and IT support staff in reducing the time needed to identify, isolate, and resolve performance issues experienced by end users.

Distributed network performance monitoring agent platforms are used to collect extensive User Experience focused data for external web resources identified by the school administrators and IT Support staff as being vital to the delivery of their curriculum. Measurements for DNS resolution time, TCP/IP communications response time, and HTTP load times (User Experience) are captured by each monitoring agent, recorded and then analyzed. The monitoring agents, both wired and wireless, are distributed at 36 individual schools: 20 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 9 high schools. In addition, monitoring agents are placed at the school district Central Office (CO) and the school district’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). Identical measurements are recorded from each agent at a polling rate ranging from 10 minutes to 1-hour dependent on the importance of the service being monitored. Higher importance services are monitored more frequently than lower importance services. Data analysis is applied to establish a performance baseline for each service, at each agent location, over the same time window.

The data collected and presented enables the limited IT staff of the school district to identify performance issues in a timely manner and automatically narrow down the fault domain. The methodologies employed and shared in this study will allow for automatic and proactive notification of the support staff enabling issues to be addressed before being reported by end users.

Pickard, J., & Drummond, D., & Lunsford, P. J., & Popoviciu, C. (2018, June), Cloud Application Monitoring for Efficient Network Management in Public Schools Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30194

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