If you need to document which computers and devices are on your network and watch for intruders in addition to monitoring network health, you’ll want to look into Neon Software’s LANsurveyor and CyberGauge combination.
Both of these software packages run on Windows 2000, 2003 and XP machines, and pricing starts at $795 per server for LANsurveyor and $395 for CyberGauge for five devices.
Besides monitoring the availability of servers, applications, devices and links, LANsurveyor automatically diagrams your network and, via , documents all the devices on the network. LANsurveyor options include intruder detection, which identifies potential intruders, disables access for unauthorized nodes and performs an analysis to determine node vulnerabilities, and a second agent-based option called Neon Responder for remotely controlling Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers as well as saving LANsurveyor data in a relational database.
When network activity exceeds a LANsurveyor threshold you’ve set, it sends e-mail, Windows Messaging alerts and SNMP traps (to OpenView, for instance) to notify an appropriate administrator of the problem. LANsurveyor also can page you, insert entries into a syslog and, for problems susceptible to automatic correction, let you remotely launch a computer program.
Rather smartly, LANsurveyor’s thresholds are sophisticated enough to let you specify that you want to be alerted only if available bandwidth falls below a certain percentage during the workday, or that alerts should be directed to a separate set of people on the weekend.
LANsurveyor’s discovery function is quick and accurate. Via its Custom Report wizard, LANsurveyor displays information on discovered nodes, SNMP data retrieved from network devices, agent data collected from Neon Responders and Session Initiation Protocol VoIP statistics. For example, the Switch/Hub Ports Report is a complete list of all nodes connected to one or more managed switches or hubs. You can export report data into Excel.
As a complement to LANsurveyor, CyberGauge measures bandwidth use and deploys SNMP to monitor such devices as routers, gateways, network-attached storage hardware, physical servers, clients and printers. CyberGauge’s separate set of thresholds, called Cascading Alert Limits, are just as sophisticated as LANsurveyor’s when it comes to relating time frames to network activity.
CyberGauge can send e-mail, Windows Messaging alerts and SNMP traps when it detects an unresponsive device or network overuse. Its reports show bandwidth use, traffic distribution, device-availability statistics and daily, weekly and monthly , utilization and average use. You can view CyberGauge’s reports as Web pages or export them as Excel worksheets.
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