Fluke Networks

Fluke Networks submitted two products for testing, its OptiView suite and the Visual Uptime Select tool, which was acquired in a recent acquisition of Visual Networks.

The OptiView product suite, as tested, consisted of the Protocol Expert and the Link Analyzer. The Protocol Expert is a software tool designed for use on lower-speed links (10/100Mbps) using a laptop. Typically, the Protocol Expert is deployed to capture and analyze VoIP traffic at the endpoint location.

The Link Analyzer tool is installed on the main uplink or core server-farm link where aggregated VoIP/data traffic traverses. Different network environments can be accommodated easily by built-in connections for the Link Analyzer, including 10/100Base-T, 1000Base-SX, 1000Base-LX and 1000Base-T.

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Fluke Networks submitted two products for testing, its OptiView suite and the Visual Uptime Select tool, which was acquired in a recent acquisition of Visual Networks.

The OptiView product suite, as tested, consisted of the Protocol Expert and the Link Analyzer. The Protocol Expert is a software tool designed for use on lower-speed links (10/100Mbps) using a laptop. Typically, the Protocol Expert is deployed to capture and analyze VoIP traffic at the endpoint location.

The Link Analyzer tool is installed on the main uplink or core server-farm link where aggregated VoIP/data traffic traverses. Different network environments can be accommodated easily by built-in connections for the Link Analyzer, including 10/100Base-T, 1000Base-SX, 1000Base-LX and 1000Base-T.

The OptiView suite stood out in our Real-Time Features category, in which we assessed the level of real-time session detail that can be reported. OptiView has the ability to identify key nodes in the network by address and role, IP endpoints, call encryption recognition and the vocoder of a specific call session.

As far as diagnostics are concerned, OptiView automatically detects and identifies such network problems as loss of a gateway, controller or specific endpoint, and can detect call-quality degradation in latency, packet loss and MOS call-quality level.

Fluke's Link Analyzer tool also features escalating notification processed and customizable alarms when network conditions reach predefined conditions.

OptiView offers many preformatted reports of the VoIP statistics collected and offers links to third party reporting tools like Crystal Reports.

Fluke's Visual Uptime Select is a traffic-analysis and network-monitoring application capable of displaying real-time activity. It requires software agents to be installed at network monitoring points software agents to be installed at network-monitoring points to report VoIP traffic between the monitored sites back to a central administrative console. Overall, it has a strong inherent ability to report outages and error conditions on the network.

Visual UpTime is able to detect and report the loss of a WAN link, call controller or gateway with active alerts sent to its service summary screen, as well as report degradation in call-quality conditions (latency, jitter, packet loss).

The reporting capabilities are extensive, comprising a large library of customizable template reports. One of these template reports has basic statistical or metric fields, for all or specific sites or IP ranges, but it can then be altered to display just the information the administrator requires.

Its straightforward, simple interface is efficient in determining and highlighting any issues with the network. This interface also offered quite a bit of flexibility in filtering and sorting the collected data.

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