NetQoS this week will unveil the latest version of its flagship product, SuperAgent, which now includes features that the company says help troubleshoot a network problem while it is happening.

SuperAgent 6 now includes a feature, dubbed Virtual Network Assistant, which collects specific data at the time of a problem or failure. The automated data collection speeds the time to repair the problem later, NetQoS says.

"When network managers get complaint calls about performance issues, they have to manually investigate if the problem happened with network, server or application components," says Reeves Alex, SuperAgent product manager. "The data collected helps network managers see what component was performing up to par and what changed suddenly."

For example, network managers using SuperAgent 6 can do raw packet capture at the exact time of the performance failure. Then they can compare the network, server and application traffic to see which is not performing according to pre-set baselines. The data is already collected so SuperAgent eliminates the need to track that down.

SuperAgent is a passive device that taps into the mirror port on a switch to monitor traffic. SuperAgent separates response time into application, network, and server delay components. The product measures and analyzes application response time for all user transactions, and compares response times against intelligent baselines, to automatically investigate the causes of problems as they occur.

Other new features in this release include an automated packet filter, which pulls out those packets that don't measure up to baseline performance metrics, and hop-to-hop delay details that show, say, router utilization at different hops along a packet's route.

"The network engineer doesn't have to spend time trying to find the delay. Staff can focus their energy on fixing the problem, not trying to hunt it down," Alex says.

Scheduled for general availability this week, SuperAgent 6 costs about $35,000 for a stand-alone unit.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.