subject: Website monitoring: Measurements must be reliable [print this page] The main objective for organizations is high quality user experience which is quite a challenge and at times would prevent organizations to move forward with respect to the streaming media strategy. Most of the challenges revolve around acceptable website performance, either achieving it, or understanding the impact on the performance of the enterprise network as a whole of delivering adequate performance.
IT managers need to understand the technical distinctions between streaming media and other technologies implemented through their networks. There are solutions that exist today to help address these distinctions such as multicast and Content Distribution Networks (CDNs). Finally no technology implementation is complete if you can't measure what you manage. Given the additional challenges and complexities associated with streaming, an intuitive streaming management tool measured from the user's perspective is needed to validate web performance.
Fundamentally, the fact is that streaming media is different than most files delivered across the network. Minor delays in receiving packets won't be noticed, while delays in video stream are most certain. Most streaming media providers try to work around the problem of delays by using a transport protocol that allows smooth streaming performance at a cost of leaving out all the protocol pieces which work to ensure that a connection and complete transmission actually occur.
For measurements to be useful, they must possess four minimum qualities. They must reflect, as accurately as possible, the condition being analyzed. Measurements must be reliable. Measured results must be comparable to one another. Finally, the measurements must not present information that isn't useful to the analysis being performed. It's quite easy for network managers to be overloaded with information.
