* Fluke's EtherScope has enhanced tests for validating LANs
Fluke Networks this week improved the LAN validation capabilities of its EtherScope Network Assistant, tests that are intended to ensure that a network is up to snuff after it is installed or changed.
The EtherScope Series II Network Assistant is a handheld device that is able to troubleshoot copper-based 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet and fiber-based 100Mbps or Gigabit Ethernet, as well as 802.11a/b/g wireless LANs. It can monitor network traffic and discover devices on the network, even in SNMPv3 environments.
The EtherScope can help detect rogue devices, and it supports the 802.11n draft standard. It can monitor 802.1p priority information to verify QoS settings. It also includes a traffic generator that can transmit runt and jumbo frames, FCS errors and user-defined traffic to observe how the network behaves.
With the suite of LAN validation tests, Fluke says organizations can save money by catching potential performance failures at the point of installation, rather than when the network is being used for production and users are affected.
The device’s expanded Service Performance Tool tests the performance of DHCP, DNS, e-mail, FTP, Web and WINS servers. Users can also define other services to be tested. The tester can set pass/fail limits on each service to size them up quickly.
The device’s Ethernet Performance Tests look at lower-level metrics such as throughput, latency, loss rate, jitter and bit errors, among other things. You can write scripts to automate tests for specialized services, and again, you can set up pass/fail limits to process the results quickly. You can use the tool to verify service-level agreements as well.
