sestri levante

Comune of Sestri Levante - NetCrunch Success Story

Italy

www.comune.sestri-levante.ge.it

“...NetCrunch surprised us with its powerful performance monitoring and network visualization capabilities. We have not found anything in our network that we cannot monitor with NetCrunch.”

Domenico Garibotto
IT Administrator, Comune of Sestri Levante
Liguria, Italy

Key benefits:

  • Advanced network visualization with logical, physical and custom maps
  • Powerful performance monitoring with centralized event database
  • Integrated tools for root cause analysis and troubleshooting

community hall in sestri levante
Community Hall in Sestri Levante

Challenge

Sestri Levante County network infrastructure consists of four major locations and several smaller sites – 16 TCP/IP networks altogether in the Active Directory domain. The sites are connected via wireless HyperLan protocol and all sites are within 20-60 km distance of each other.  

The sites monitored by NetCrunch include eight schools, two public libraries, an information center, canteen and a job information center among others. The total number of the monitored nodes is constantly growing - currently around 650 nodes are being monitored, including approximately 350 workstations and 30 servers (Linux and Windows OS). The network is used by around 300 community employees. This year the county is working on a project to install more hotspots within waterside sea area in the Sestri Levante’s old town where people  often go for a walk during the summer time. Almost three thousand users have registered for this service so far.

Before NetCrunch, the network was monitored only by freeware or point applications like Look&LAN, Look&Host, and nMap. However, the network performance data gathered was not centralized and insufficient for the county needs.“We have been evaluating many NMS solutions but only NetCrunch surprised us with its powerful performance monitoring and network visualization capabilities” - explains Mr. Garibotto. 

Solution

NetCrunch combines well-known information visualization techniques — logical network mapping, physical connections between switches and nodes, custom network maps, and dynamic nodes views filtered by different criteria. It offers real-time and proactive client/server monitoring.

“We have found invaluable the Physical Segments (part of advanced physical topology maps) and Show Port Mapping functionality in NetCrunch - thanks to it we can easily find the root of the problem, like a network delay or issues related to the specific router/switch interface. We appreciate the fact that NetCrunch integrates all these functionalities within a shared events database, that is also available through the Web Access. The program ships also with a number of diagnostic tools, that allow us to remotely access and troubleshoot the specific node. In other words: so far we haven't found anything that we can't manage with NetCrunch” - adds Mr. Garibotto.

The county uses NetCrunch to monitor following network services:

  • Mail Server, DNS, FTP, File Server, HTTP File Server
  • Web Server (Apache), Website, Video Streaming, Intranet
  • VOIP, Fax via Email
  • Centralized Anti-Virus Management
  • IP Camera for surveillance service, analog video camera connected to video server
  • HotSpot Mesh network, Radius, and MySQL database
  • Hardware Firewalls protecting against unauthorized access (Remote assistance, VPN, Web Access)
  • Remote Access Service for network troubleshooting
  • Helpdesk Service for the internal users

and is collecting following reports from NetCrunch:

  • Database statistics (Oracle, MySQL)
  • Exchange Server
  • Users Activites (Logon and Logoff)
  • Linux and Windows Server performance statistics
  • Server Application and Network Services statistics
  • Router/Switches performance
  • Windows workstations availability
  • VoIP services availability
  • Status and traffic of main network link between the sites

About Sestri Levante County

Sestri Levante is a city and commune (county) in the Italian Riviera, mentioned by Dante in "The Divine Comedy". A maritime and merchant center in the Roman times, Sestri Levante has become part of the Republic of Genoa in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century Hans Christian Andersen sojourned here and was fascinated by the beauty of the place. In the recent years this once quiet fishing village has been turning into a lively tourist hotspot.