Network managers are getting a fresh perspective on their networks. Several vendors are releasing software that shows the response time end users are receiving.
NextPoint Networks, of Westford, Mass., next week will unveil a version of its S3 performance management product that is tailored to Web-based commerce and monitors transactions, such as Web-based forms, from an end-user perspective. In addition, Luminate Software, of Redwood City, Calif., will release help-desk software that lets operators bring up end-to-end response time. And Ganymede Software, of Morrisville, N.C., this week updated its Pegasus performance management tool to measure latency on each hop of an end-user's route through a network.
Looking at end-to-end response time isn't a comprehensive method for managing a network, but it is becoming an increasingly valuable technique. "It's useful for me as a reference point," says Bob Currier, director of data communications at Duke University, which uses Pegasus.
"The users' perception of what is going on is not always quantifiable," he says. The new feature gives network managers the statistics to show what the user is actually experiencing. Managers can then pass this data on to users or executives.
Other tools, such as protocol analyzers and network management platforms, are also necessary to track down the cause of any problems that may arise, industry analysts say. "As soon as you get [the statistics], you had better have something else in your back pocket to help you go track down the problem," says Mark Bouchard, senior research analyst at the Meta Group, in Stamford, Conn.
The new version of NextPoint's software, called S3e, is designed to watch Web sites. It generates transactions to measure the response time that end users are seeing when they interact with the sites. It can measure responses over time, figure out what normal response time is, and alert managers when response time is longer than normal. It will ship for $30,000 in June.
Luminate's ServiceDesk is part of the company's software suite for managing SAP R/3. It's intended for help desks, which can retrieve information about SAP R/3 performance problems by entering in a user ID. ServiceDesk gives the help desk data about the network's response time, the SAP R/3 application's response time, the SAP R/3 queue time and the SAP R/3 database's response time. The product ships next week, starting at $15,000.
Version 1.2 of Ganymede's Pegasus software measures the time it takes for packets to traverse each hop in the network between the user and the server being accessed. When there is a performance problem, the software can determine which route was taken and alert an administrator. The software is shipping now, starting at $7,500.
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