Apparent Networks' AppCritical tool, an active-mode monitoring system, has an intuitive, linear interface that provides very efficient access to information.

Collecting information on network activity and reporting on these captured statistics is one of the product's strengths. Based on applying a very small amount of traffic consisting of hybrid Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)-style queries, it operates unobtrusively from a single installed location.

In most instances a single site installation is sufficient to monitor the entire network. In some highly secured networks that limit ICMP activity, additional software probes called remote sequencers might be necessary to overcome restricted boundaries. They are installed on the remote hosts. With its unique architecture, this was far easier to deploy in an enterprise network compared with the other VAT products tested.

In our traffic-capture category, which assesses each product's awareness of network conditions and VoIP endpoints, AppCritical leads the pack, because it was very strong in collecting the data necessary to identify certain network conditions (such as the loss of an IP WAN connection, call controller or gateway) that would affect VoIP applications. It also had a high degree of success in pinpointing the cause of degradation in call quality, and its expert-commentator-like interface helped diagnose network issues.

AppCritical has one of the best and highly developed help and analysis support interfaces we have tested. Reports and quality-assurance threshold alerts contain links to background information to assist in explaining the contents.

Where this product fell down was in its lack of real-time analysis tools.

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