The tool enables IT departments to assess how packet loss combined with their existing VPN/ZTNA solutions impacts the performance of their business-critical applications and their end-user experience.
Research shows that as little as 0.0047% of packet loss and 30ms latency can have a dramatic effect on performance, reducing effective throughput by 95%. Increased latency from VPN or ZTNA services can therefore have a multiplier effect on performance degradation.
Users on office LANs with fast WAN connections are shielded from the issue, which mainly affects remote/mobile users at the edge of the network. Packet loss most commonly occurs in the “last mile” – the distance from the user to the broadband network or the nearest cell tower – or the final access segment between the user’s device and a Wi-Fi router.
Prakash Mana, CEO of Cloudbrink said: “The shift to hybrid work models brings new hurdles. Remote users often experience lag and connection inconsistencies (latency and jitter) that disrupt their workflow and create frustration with technology. This new tool empowers IT teams to identify these bottlenecks and implement solutions that optimize application performance and end worker frustration.”
The Cloudbrink tool simulates the network conditions users are likely to experience working from home on consumer-grade broadband or when on the road using cellular networks and hotel, airport or coffee shop Wi-Fi.
The company expects the tool to be used by organizations comparing two or more solutions during the evaluation (or PoC) phase of procurement, and to test the impact of variable network conditions on private and SaaS applications.
Tests published earlier this year by the independent network test lab Broadband Testing demonstrated the aggravating effect of small amounts of packet loss under normal network conditions, and how packet loss combines with even modest increases in latency to severely impair performance.
Steve Broadhead, director of Broadband Testing, said: “Seeing is believing. This tool provides a great way of enabling the CTO to witness at first hand the effects of network degradation and how it can impact application performance.”
Dwight Wilhelm CEO of Graphene Networks Inc. said: “A critical component of helping our customers see the value of a solution is to show them how it will perform in their network and in real-world conditions. However, lab environments are rarely useful for evaluating how a solution performs against a myriad of potential real-world problems. The use of this tool provides a novel way to take real-world applications and simulate how network impediments impact application performance. This way, we can show the customer what to expect for their remote users and it helps us mitigate issues faced by a work-from-anywhere staff."
