Network managers responsible for troubleshooting performance problems say they find it difficult to separate network issues from application issues, recent poll results reveal.

Half of 105 network engineers and IT executives surveyed on-site at the Interop New York 2008 conference this week said the biggest challenge they experienced when troubleshooting application performance and availability was being able to discern network-related problems from application-centric issues. Another 27 per cent said identifying application-specific transaction issues challenged them most.

"This can often be the most time-consuming portion of troubleshooting. If they can determine which one has the problem, they can apply specific knowledge and toolsets to that area," said Charles Thompson, manager of systems engineering at Network Instruments. The network and application performance management vendor conducted the survey while exhibiting at the show.

More than one-quarter of those polled indicated a lack of information about problems and their causes challenged them most, and 26 per cent found managing application performance and availability most challenging. Some 46 per cent worried most about quality of service, and 54 per cent anticipate being more challenged when managing virtualization on their nets. Others expect unified communications (27 per cent) and cloud computing (20 per cent) to make their jobs more difficult in the future.