Spectrum offers net upgrade advice

By Jeff Caruso
Network World, 02/15/99

MONTEREY, CALIF. - Cabletron this week will bolster its Spectrum network management system by shipping a data warehouse add-on that gives companies the historical network trend information they need to make better-educated net upgrade decisions.

Cabletron also revealed plans for the next version of Spectrum, due by year-end. The company says Version 5.2 is intended to improve the product's Web interface and make it easier to implement sweeping network equipment configuration changes.

Cabletron shared its news last week at a company conference attended by about 150 Spectrum customers.

The warehouse add-on, which had been slated to ship a year ago, will store all network management statistics, such as the amount of data transferred, and the number of collisions and errors.

The warehouse imports data from Spectrum servers across an enterprise and lets users see how their networks behaved in past days, weeks or months.

"The idea is to show network managers the trends in their networks and help them plan for deploying network equipment in the future," says Katrinka McCallum, general manager of the Spectrum unit at Cabletron. "You don't know what you need until you try it today. That's just not acceptable."

Cabletron's decision to deliver a data warehouse for Spectrum is in line with an industry trend toward "proactive" network management, in which tools use historical information to predict future performance. Computer Associates is readying a similar database for the second half of this year, and Hewlett-Packard's NetMetrix product has trend capabilities.

Tivoli's NetView has had a similar database for years, but in just a few weeks the company will release its first pre-made reports for the database, which will show performance and event statistics over time. The reports come from technology Tivoli acquired when it bought Software Artistry last year.

Fresh start

Cabletron released an early version of the data warehouse last year, but the first users requested some major changes and bug fixes, says Jeff Ghannam, director of engineering for Spectrum at Cabletron. Initially, the product only imported virtual LAN setup information from Spectrum, but now it imports data about how everything on the network is connected to everything else.

Early users also wanted more network reports out of the box. While the warehouse is a relational database that can be accessed through Open Database Connectivity or SQL technology to create custom reports, users wanted Cabletron to provide them with sample reports they could use to graph network statistics without doing a lot of work.

Cabletron used Microsoft Access to create a series of 18 reports that shows performance and traffic volume statistics in graphs.

Spectrum customer Jim Pye, a systems analyst at Texas Instruments, says he would rather use the canned reports than create his own. "I don't want to have to do too much development," he says.

Currently, the data warehouse is built using an Oracle database, but future versions will let users choose other databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server.

The warehouse costs $30,000 when configured to collect data from one or two Spectrum servers and $80,000 for collecting data from three or more servers.

Next revision

Now that the warehouse is being released, Cabletron's next Spectrum project is getting Version 5.2 out the door.

The new version will enable companies to make changes in network equipment configurations across an enterprise.

The software will also allow users to navigate through a network hierarchy using a mechanism such as the directory tree structure found in Microsoft Windows.

Version 5.2 will add support for ATM circuits to help companies monitor information about an ATM service, such as performance and quality-of-service levels.

Before that release, however, Cabletron will continue to add Web-based consoles to the product. Today, Spectrum has a way to manage alarms over the World Wide Web. In the next few months, Cabletron will add Web-based alarm- and event-reporting applications.

The company is also readying an "alarm ticker," a Java-based applet that would scroll critical alarms across a manager's screen. These consoles will ship in the next few months. Pricing has not been set.

Spread Spectrum

Meanwhile, Cabletron is still trying to determine whether the Spectrum business would work best as a unit within Cabletron or as a wholly owned or partly owned subsidiary, McCallum says.

Cabletron has struggled to keep the development of its network management software - which must work with any vendor's hardware - apart from its own network hardware development.

In addition to the development group, there are Spectrum experts in Cabletron's training, help desk and other departments.

McCallum has united these employees under one umbrella, which has profit-and-loss accountability.