The Network Never Sleeps and Never Takes a Day Off

By Bob Corum, OIT

"The network never sleeps, and never takes a day off." Every day of the year, around the clock, 24x7x365, the State's network has to be up and running to handle the traffic required for systems transactions and to ensure network access whenever it is needed.  To demonstrate one aspect of network services with 24x7x365 demand, the chart and graph below show last week's statistics on remote access users over the Juniper system.  What is interesting about last week's chart is that Monday was a holiday, and Tuesday was a State shut-down day.  Yet, Tuesday's remote access volume is nearly identical to the other regular days.  It should be noted that almost 2,000 people are exempt from the State shut-down days, because of the nature of their duties (Public Safety and many other functions across State Government).  For remote access, the average number of concurrent users over the 24-hour day is about 150 people, with a maximum of about 300 during mid-day hours.  See the graph below for a comparison of days.