Users find reporting tools indispensible

By Jim Duffy
Network World, 3/16/98

As users evolve from network device management to service-level management, they are relying on network reporting tools to keep IT and service providers honest.

Products and services from the leading vendors - Concord Communications Corp., DeskTalk Systems, Inc., International Network Services (INS) and Kaspia Systems - play a key role in helping users track and maintain network service levels. The ability of these products to display historical and trending information on application reponse time helps ensure that users are getting enough bang for the bandwidth buck.

"As we've grown [and] as we've not gotten any more finances from the state to hire more staff, have we become more dependent on [reporting]? Yes," said Joe Askins, data communications director at Arizona State University (ASU), in Tempe, Ariz. "It's the only way we've been able to survive and keep a good network running and keep growing it."

ASU's data communications department has service-level agreements (SLA) with four Internet service providers. ASU uses Concord's NetworkHealth reporting tool to monitor utilization, bandwidth capacity and load balancing on OC-3, 10M bit/sec Ethernet and T-1 Internet access links, and on frame relay links to state agencies.

Conversely, NetworkHealth helps Askins' group avoid SLAs with its customers, which include ASU staffers on more than 20 Ethernet segments. "We've been able to see problems in buildings or on floors or in departments usually before they get too serious," Askins said.

Reporting tools have become more important to Pacific Bell Network Integration's (PBNI) ability to deliver SLAs, said Brian Weir, network systems consultant at PBNI. PBNI uses DeskTalk's TrendSNMP to provide performance and health reports on customer networks.

With TrendSNMP, PBNI can give customers performance data on circuits and termination equipment, Weir said. On frame relay circuits specifically, PBNI now can show customers whether they are getting the burst rate they are paying for, Weir said.

"From a service-level perspective, we can give [customers] information, including the quality of the packets going through the frame switches,by measuring discard-eligible packets," Weir said. "We are giving them a clear picture that they are getting exactly 128K [bit/sec] plus they are able to burst, and the quality of service is there."

Service-level management has not yet hit financial software developer Intuit, Inc. But the company plans to move in that direction within the next two months, said Rick Parkinson, network manager at Intuit.

When Intuit moves to service-level management, INS' EnterprisePro software and services, which the company currently uses, will play an integral part. Intuit is using EnterprisePro for monitoring and reporting network utilization, handling capacity planning and error conditions, and for comparing frame relay circuit utilization with committed information rates, Parkinson said.

The University of Kentucky is using Kaspia's Network Audit technology for device-specific reports on bandwidth and CPU utilization. "When we got into some serious service-level management contract discussion with other departments on campus, we realized that we need to be able to create and produce reports on equipment," said Doyle Friskney, director of communications and network systems at the Lexington school.

The university then correlates the reported data and trending information with data from Cisco Systems, Inc.'s CiscoWorks to predict potential problems, Friskney said. CiscoWorks monitors devices in real time, and Kaspia is useful for historical trending analysis, he said.