September 13, 1999

Management Tools Emerge

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Three products offer network monitoring for less than $1,000

By Logan Harbaugh

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ompany size doesn't matter when it comes to network monitoring. Most companies with as few as 50 employees (and some with fewer) still need some level of network monitoring application, if only to keep track of network utilization and alert the administrator when it's time to upgrade to a faster version of Ethernet. A combination of historical data tracking and protocol analysis can also make it much easier to identify and isolate problems on the network, whether that network has 50 nodes on it or 50,000.

When problems surface on the network, such as a malfunctioning Ethernet adapter, a corrupted network protocol stack on a workstation, or a print server that has gotten into a strange state, a protocol analyzer can save hours or days of frustration and help the administrator find and fix problems faster than is otherwise possible.

Large companies have extensive network-monitoring and protocol-analysis suites available, as well as specialized matrix switches that let one console monitor large switched networks. Most smaller companies, though, have neither the cash nor the resources to install, set up, and use enterprise-level monitors.

For this review, I looked at three off-the-shelf network-monitoring and protocol-analysis packages, with the aim of testing their applicability to the emerging enterprise. All are priced at less than $1,000 and offer some similar features. None requires specialized hardware, other than a standard PC with an Ethernet adapter that supports "promiscuous mode," which lets the adapter capture all traffic on the LAN, whether it's addressed to that PC or not.

While larger companies will have some administrators who are familiar with analyzers and their output, this is not always the case in an emerging enterprise. These packages will require some investment in training or study for the administrator. While they can all provide lots of information on what the network is doing, that information isn't necessarily accessible or useful without a solid knowledge of network protocols and operations.

For example, it's easy to find out how many packets per second are going across the wire on your network-but what does that mean to you? Without some idea of what the numbers mean and where to set thresholds of good and bad, the tools are not very useful.

That's why I strongly recommend that administrators looking at any of these packages consider some sort of formal training in network analysis; at the least, they should read one of the many books available.

All the tools reviewed attempt to create some sort of automatic baseline, so that even without configuration by a knowledgeable person they can produce some useful data. These baselines, though, are of limited value without some understanding of, for instance, whether a rise from 10% network utilization to 20% is meaningful. The longer the programs run, the more data they collect, and the more useful the automatic baselines will be.

All the products were installed on Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 5, on three separate systems. They all support Windows 95/98 as well. All require adding a service under the network-control panel in NT. Once the products are added, you must reboot the system.

continued...page 2, 3

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