The documentation includes a good manual that covers installation and setup procedures and also has some good information on the principles of network troubleshooting, what network statistics represent, and how to interpret them.

Configuration is straightforward, and the interface for collecting and viewing data is easy to use. The statistics are shown in a manner that is easy to understand. Setting up filters to capture data only on certain traffic is easy to do.

Observer supports shared (hub-based) and switched networks by offering statistical sampling of all switch ports (looping) and a full port-based capture (static). Observer supports any switch that allows port redirection and has a Simple Network Management Protocol or Telnet management interface. Running more probes on other network segments is simple to set up. When you buy additional licenses, the probe software is already included with the product. It can also discover and add more probes to the console.

Observer is the most sophisticated of these tools in its expandability and feature set, although it is also the most complex to set up and configure. It would be the strongest contender in a network that is expected to grow dramatically or that is a largely switched environment, with few workstations on each segment.

LANtracer
Proteon LAN Products By Microvitec Inc.'s LANtracer provides network traffic analysis through any standard Web browser. Multiple network segments can be monitored from a single browser. The program also has an automatic baseline feature that gets you going right away, although the default alarms may be at rather low thresholds until it adapts to the traffic on your network.

The installation program installs the probe and a Web server that makes the traffic information available. To view the information, use any Web browser that can handle Java. This is necessary even on the system on which the probe is running-the browser is set to 127.0.0.1, the loopback interface, in this case. The systems on which the probe is installed and the browser is running should be relatively high-powered, as Java tools can be slow.

Documentation is online only. There's a useful tour that shows you how to set up the product. There is also a PDF file for installation and configuration, although it covers only the basics of installation.

Configuration requires knowledge of the parameters required; in most cases, the defaults in the various text boxes in the configuration panels will not produce usable results. You must know the appropriate ranges to enter, and although this information is accessible through the online documentation and tour, it would be useful if there were some defaults that would work for most applications.

Of the products tested, LANtracer is the easiest to use in a network with many kinds of systems. While the probe must be running on a Windows system, the data it collects can be viewed from any browser.

Conclusion
Network monitoring is as important to small networks as it is to the largest. Emerging companies need tools that make sense at their size and will grow with them gracefully.

Any of these products handle 50-node networks well, and all can be expanded to support growing networks with multiple network segments in a switched environment. Observer is the most easily expandable to handle multiple segments, while EtherPeek would be the least expensive to monitor multiple segments, since EtherHelp can be used on multiple segments at no additional cost. LANtracer has the strength of being accessible from any browser with Java, a definite plus in a multi-operating system environment.

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