A new series of YouTube documentary videos by Werner Herzog, the German filmmaker, elevates network testing and monitoring to the level of Luke Skywalker, saving the world in Star Wars. The video series — "The Connected World," scheduled for release in October — looks at how reliant people and businesses have become on the Internet and how catastrophic it would be if the Internet failed.

The Connected World trailer on YouTube features scientists saying such things as “You can really bring down the whole infrastructure by bringing down the network.”

NetScout, which hired Herzog to create the video series, is referring to itself as the Guardian of the Connected World, taking the relatively boring topic of network testing and monitoring and making it super glamorous.

Jim McNiel, global chief marketing officer for NetScout, writes on a LinkedIn blog, “Mr. Herzog is indeed producing and directing this film, and I will tell you why he is. When I first spoke with Werner regarding this project he expressed skepticism and stated that he does not do commercial work. In fact Mr. Herzog turned down the project entirely.

“The next day, CenturyLink experienced a vandalized fiber optic cable, resulting in huge Internet service interruption in Arizona. I shared this story with Werner and explained to him that if the Internet were to go away we would not go back to the 1980s, rather we would go back to the 1880s for the simple reason that so much of what we do today relies on our new connected world, and the old processes and approaches are obsolete and laid to rest.”

In addition to creating unique marketing campaigns, this year NetScout acquired the communications business of Danaher Corporation, comprising Tektronix Communications, Arbor Networks, VSS Monitoring and certain parts of Fluke Networks, in a $2.3 billion deal.

Danaher "brings together a much broader portfolio for service assurance, enhances the core network monitoring, session trace call monitoring, adds a portfolio of CEM products to the mix, and gives us the security play with Arbor,” says Mike Serrano, senior product marketing manager with NetScout.