In today's world where more and more emphasis is laid on cutting costs, it just doesn't sound good if your network center turns up being the "Cost Center". Very often a network glitch is mistaken for a shortage and more bandwidth is provisioned. If a tool could present the network manager with long-term link usage patterns, the IT manager can take a more informed decision.
An IT manager based in New York headquarters notices consistently high utilization on one of his core links. He is considering a link upgrade, which can cost him up to $ 140,000.
He logs into the NetFlow Analyzer to check the traffic pattern on that link and does see a consistent increase in the overall link utilization over the last 6 months.
He then looks at the overall application distribution for this period and sees that the increase in this link utilization has been contributed almost entirely due to the http and https traffic that he diverted through this link from another link towards the end of May 2007. Most of the other applications are not using much more than their baselined levels.
He also notices that the other link is still relatively under utilized and that he can safely re-route the http and https traffic back through the same link, thereby saving $140,000 in link upgrade costs.