If you'd rather hand off the performance management chores, there are companies such as Candle and NetOps that will do it for you remotely.
NetOps, for example, has Distributed Status Monitors (DSM) that collect performance data from more than 50 different network devices, says Ed Young, director of business development. You download the DSMs from the NetOps Web site and configure them to monitor your various network devices by completing a Web-based form.
Alternatively, NetOps will do all that for you.
After initially creating a network model and baseline, the DSMs continually monitor the network and collect data which is periodically uploaded to the NetOps site.
The company analyzes it using rules-based tools to identify problems, and ships back a report detailing the problems and recommended fixes.
This week, NetOps plans to come out with a version of its toolset that users can run on their own site, to identify problems in real time, Young says. It will feed data into enterprise platforms, such as OpenView.
Because the product interrogates network devices every second, using only a single packet per device, it is likely to find out about problems much faster than OpenView or similar tools that poll only every few minutes - theoretically enabling you to fix or get around the problem before it disables users.
RELATED LINKS
Includes downloadable copy of DSM.
Network fire prevention
You'll need a tool kit that includes performance monitoring gear, application modeling tools and, soon, neural network software. Network World, 9/20/99.
