* A network management tool from NetIntact worth looking at
If you’re keen on keeping your network up and running – and who isn’t – then there’s no such thing as too many network management tools. There’s always room for one more, such as NetIntact’s PacketLogic.
This is an accurate, well-designed network monitoring tool. It’s easy to set up, and offers traffic-flow analysis that is practical and highly relevant. PacketLogic might well give you a new perspective on your network.
The PacketLogic product is a rack-mount appliance that you connect to your network so that traffic passes through it. The appliance is an Intel-based computer running Linux, which automatically boots the appliance’s PacketLogic software. In addition to the PacketLogic software, NetIntact also developed a custom TCP/IP protocol stack and optimized drivers to help the appliance more efficiently handle high traffic loads. Our test unit processed up to 25,000 to 30,000 packets per second (depending on packet sizes and contents) before we noticed any delays in traffic flow. You administer PacketLogic through a client module that you download from NetIntact’s Web site.
Using Layer 7 protocol detection, PacketLogic classifies network traffic for threshold detection (for example alerting) and statistical purposes. The appliance can optionally shape (prioritize) traffic and act as a firewall. We tested all four functions – alerts, statistics, shaping and firewall.
PacketLogic examines each packet’s contents, not just its destination port number, to determine the packet’s protocol. It recognizes more than 80 protocols. PacketLogic tracks network utilization by application, user and connection, and produces several statistical reports. These reports reveal, for example, which application uses the most bandwidth during a given time interval and which user is consuming the most bandwidth – and what the user was doing with the bandwidth.
PacketLogic’s alert mechanism has variable thresholds for detecting high or unwanted traffic. Its rules are time-of-day- and day-of-week-sensitive, and NetIntact groups the rules in eight categories: Client, Server, Server Port, Client Port, Server Interface, Client Interface, Service and Time Object. PacketLogic can apply a rule threshold to one computer or a specified group of computers, and it can apply a rule to all traffic destined for a specific port. PacketLogic inserts its alerts into a log file that the PacketLogic client displays in much the same way the Windows Server Event Viewer does.
During busy times, the appliance decides which packets to send first and which to put at the end of the queue by using quality-of-service rules the network manager specifies. In our tests, PacketLogic excelled in forwarding critical packets before emitting less-important messages. We even tested high-volume mixtures of non-TCP/IP and TCP/IP traffic to see how the appliance would behave. TCP has an internal throttling mechanism that typically fails in the presence of other protocols. The mechanism senses overall TCP traffic levels to know when to backpressure itself, but the traffic level detection ignores other protocols as it decides how many packets it can send in a “window” before expecting a response from its session partner. The PacketLogic appliance flew through the traffic quite nicely as it prioritized, for example, database transactions over e-mail messages.
For the full report, go to to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/1215rev.html
