Net/Systems Management /

Scouting the network

By Barry Nance
Network World, 04/03/00

Unlike NetReality's WanXplorer and Paradyne's OpenLane, the more vendor-neutral NetScout Manager Plus was able to interpret and analyze Management Information Bases (MIB) from all the SNMP-aware devices on our network, including Paradyne's and Visual Networks' DSU/CSUs. NetScout Manager Plus gave us more than 40 integrated baselining and trending tools along with customizable, useful reports. Although the product isn't a service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring tool per se, the reports clearly presented a rating of the performance of our frame relay links against each SLA's quality-of-service metrics. For observing utilization trends that let you stay on top of the need for committed information rate (CIR) changes, NetScout Manager Plus' Baseline report contrasts current period traffic with traffic for the last period. Although it didn't show as much WAN link detail as OpenLane, NetScout Manager Plus was able to retrieve FrameSaver statistics to let us monitor the frame relay link down to individual Data Link Connection Identifiers (DLCI). NetScout Manager Plus also gave us a good view of traffic at various levels of our network segments, including the data link, network and application layers. For example, at the application layer, NetScout told us how much of the traffic came from data access middleware, such as Open Database Connectivity connections, and how much consisted of file service packets. It produced alarms for configurable thresholds, showed a real-time picture of the network, and prepared reports for capacity planning and SLA-compliance purposes. It also monitored our switch ports and virtual LANs.

We found setting alarms on NetScout probes an easy procedure with NetScout Manager Plus. In one test, only a few minutes of effort produced traps for changes in CIR, additions or deletions of DLCIs and high permanent virtual circuit utilization. The product also helped us identify frame relay links experiencing under- or overutilization capacity problems. Its Trend Reporter let us create reports for daily, weekly or monthly viewing, and we used NetScout's WebCast component to publish that report data in newspaper format on Web pages.

Nance, a software developer and consultant for 29 years, is the author of Introduction to Networking, 4th Edition and Client/Server LAN Programming. You can contact him at barryn@erols.com .