LAS VEGAS -- The saying suggests that what happens in Las Vegas should stay in Vegas, but when Interop attendees get back home they might want to download a handful of free network management tools set to be on display this week at the conference.

SYS Technologies this week will debut the sixth in a series of free network management tools the vendor says perform targeted IT management functions from an operator's desktop. The vendor will introduce Interop Las Vegas attendees to dVUE6, or Lighthouse, a compact graphical software gadget that uses syslog messages to identify network-connected devices approaching a potentially troubled status, company officials say.

SYS Technologies says Lighthouse provides an early warning system of sorts to network managers, alerting them when key elements in the environment are approaching a troubled status. The free software collects syslog messages from devices connected to the network and uses a display of five lights to show the five network devices with the most syslog alarms, which are color-coded based on severity. Lighthouse also can relay up/down availability status of network-connected devices to the network manager's desktop, the vendor says. The software runs on Microsoft desktop operating system as a utility or as a Vista sidebar gadget.

Lighthouse is a part of the vendor's dVUE series of free software tools, which have been downloaded more than 66,000 times since SYS Technologies introduced dVUE1, or Web Tender in July 2007. Web Tender is a utility that helps network managers pinpoint Web site performance issues from the user perspective. Speed Trap, or dVUE2, measures upload and download speeds, and dVUE3's ServsUp is software designed to monitor local and remote servers. The fourth free application, QueueVue, works to locate mail queue bottlenecks in Microsoft Exchange servers and dVUE5's IOD Tracker collects and graphs network device metrics, the vendor says.

The dVUE desktop gadgets are designed to offer network managers free, easy-to-use tools to monitor performance across their environments and also serve as a gateway to SYS Technologies' new dopplerVUE commercial network management product, company officials say. SYS Technologies will also be sharing with show attendees demonstrations of dopplerVUE, but the free tools operate independently from dopplerVUE, the company says, but future dVUE releases are expected to incorporate features dopplerVUE users could also leverage.

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