Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff | TAG: Networking

MORE ENTRIES

TAG: Networking

May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dispatch from Interop: Voice-data combos creating the buzz du jour

Lots of talk at Interop 2007 about voice, data, and combining the two. The phrase "unified communications" is being tossed about more often than acrobats in a Cirque du Soleil show. Avaya announced their new Avaya Distributed Office system, a fully-IP communications system for branch offices - it focuses on high integration, easy rollout, and small TCO with the goal of networking employees across all branches of a company, said Carl Baptiste, Avaya's vice president of converged products. The Avaya Distributed Office i40 and Avaya Distributed Office i120 hardware can be pre-configured to match a company's preferences, and a wizard walks through on-site configuration. It then links up with the central management software to take care of call routing. While the Distributed Office system is aimed at branch offices, it sure sounds to me like it wouldn't take too much to turn it into an SMB-style telephony package...

InfiniBand poised for growth: A new report from IDC forecasts high demand for InfiniBand (IB) as it works its way out of high-performance computing (HPC) environments and into the enterprise. Worldwide IB host channel adaptor (HCA) factory revenues are expected to grow from $62.3 million in 2006 to $224.7 million in 2011, with IB switch port sales expected to grow from $94.9 million in 2006 to $612.2 million in 2011. Demand from datacenter and database environments, virtualization, and the high-transaction and compliance needs of certain verticals (financial companies, health care) are bringing IB into the enterprise - but as a complement to existing FC and Ethernet, according to the Infiniband Trade Association.

Burn, baby, burn: Word has it that the folks from ioSafe - they make "disaster-proof" backup and storage devices - took a couple of their boxes out to a distant parking lot last night and set 'em on fire to show just how disaster-proof they really are (don't worry, it was a pre-planned event with plenty of security measures taken). I still say they should have tossed a few of their products into the Mirage's volcano...

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on May 24, 2007 12:29 PM

May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dispatch from Interop: NAC's the word

It's a breezy 85 degrees here in Las Vegas, but the Mandalay Bay convention center AC is keeping thousands upon thousands of Interop-ites cool and content as they bustle from floor to floor. (Note to self: next time, listen to the little voice that says "choose the comfy shoes." My dogs, they're barking!)

The crowds are quite impressive; estimates say there may be 20,000+ here, and I wouldn't doubt it. NAC and security are big attention-getters, and VoIP interest is high (perhaps a sign that enterprises really are becoming comfortable with sending voice traffic over their networks?). Here are a couple of things that caught my eye while roaming the show floor:

NAC attack: Lots of NAC talk out there, but Lockdown Networks is playing the interoperability card with their appliances and "iNAC" interoperability partnerships. The Lockdown NAC strategy is to integrate with your existing security programs and appliances - they've just announced a software update with support for 802.11 wireless solutions from Avaya, Meru Networks, and Trapeze, and they will now pull in event information from any device that supports Web services or syslog. There's a full published API, too, and a hardware update on the way. Nifty.

NAP-NAC news: In case you haven't already heard, Microsoft is publishing a section of its NAP (network access protection) protocol, and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is making that Microsoft segment part of its NAC. That leaves Cisco out in the cold as the only one not supporting the TCG specs. Should be interesting to see how that plays out.

Hang it all: Hate the way those server racks take up so much space, especially in small offices and branch locations? Very cool alternative making its debut at Interop: the Armarac "zero-footprint" rack, from New Zealand-based Thureon. It's a wall-mounted, colorful enclosure that locks servers inside and secures them with a double-lock system: one key opens the KVM on the front, one that opens the enclosure to allow access to the servers. The hinged doors open vertically, so the Armarac takes about 4 square feet of space when opened up, but since you're hanging everything on the wall, there's no squatting and bending to get access to the guts (check out the online demo). There's 6U of space inside, and servers "hang" on racks that swing open to allow access to those in the back. Lots of customization available depending on your environment, and you can even pick your colors if you place a big order (green camo is available for those extremely remote branch offices). Add a neon-light kit, disco ball, and a margarita dispenser, and this server rack could quickly become party central...

Keep an eye on Oliver Rist's SMB IT blog for more tasty Interop tidbits, as well as our special report page

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on May 22, 2007 01:14 PM

December 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Analysis: Networking vendors aim at cross-platform visibility

"Geek in Paradise" and Test Center Contributing Analyst Brian Chee is my go-to guy when I'm looking for expert insight on anything networking-related. Earlier today, I wrote about EMC's latest version of its Smarts Service Assurance Manager (SAM) and IP Availability Manager (IPAM). Among other things, the company touted the products' support for MPLS networks, as well as the implementation of higher security, such as SNMPv3.

I tapped Brian for his comments about the product announcement. Here's what he told me:

"Considering how few enterprises have widespread deployment of MPLS, this is an announcement aimed at trying to lure future buyers. It starts off sounding EMC is promising the world, but it has some key features that are most likely being driven by Department of Defense (DoD) requirements."

"Network General's NetVigil product has a small number of common features, but is going in a similar direction. The goal for this segment is to better tie together disparate IP resources and provide a way to correlate events in a cross-platform, cross-site manner. Too much is being missed due to the needle in a haystack effect and this and a few others in the product category are trying to be the glue that enterprises will adopt to provide that cross-platform correlation."

"We saw a glimpse in the SEM (security event management) shootout where one of the vendors showed off how a card-swipe was correlated with a remote VPN connection. By themselves, each event is legal, but together, they spell break-in."

"I think it's about time vendors start working towards multiplatform, multi-event correlations. The folks in the IETF have definitely made headway with a common XML replacement for SNMP. So while that bakes in the IETF ovens, it only makes sense to get a product to market with SNMP v3 to make the DoD happy, while taking a first stab at trying to aggregate the NOC."

Brian, by the way, is the founder and directors the Univ. of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology's Advanced Network Computing Laboratory. Whenever we do a large-scale networking test, you can bet that Brian and his lab are involved.

Posted by Ted Samson on December 12, 2006 08:51 PM

December 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

EMC boost its network management Smarts

Aiming to equip network admins with deeper insight and more secure control over large-scale, complex networks, EMC this week announced Version 7.0 of its EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager (SAM) and IP Availability Manager (IPAM).

Smarts SAM, an integral part of EMC's EMC Smarts management suite (picked up in 2004), integrates and correlates topology, events, and analysis from multiple network sources, delivering a real-time, end-to-end perspective on the IT environment and its health, according to EMC.

IPAM automates real-time, root-cause analysis of network connectivity layers, including NAS, by analyzing thousands of simultaneous events, according to the company.

Improvements to the products include enhancements aimed at highly secure networks. Among them is SNMPv3 authentication support for traps, "which is a key requirement for government agencies and managed service providers." This support gives users two layers of security, providing full encryption of packets as well as full encryption and authentication for polling and discovery, EMC says.

Also new is an IP Tagging feature, which helps admins get a handle on overlapping IP addresses in MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching ) and IP environments. Specifically, it can now tag and monitor multiple links with the same address, allowing it to deal with duplicate addresses across disparate domains - useful for companies with various business partners, for example.

Additionally, EMC has added a capability for isolating MPLS service down to the LSP (Label Switch Path) connection, which the company says can reduce the amount of time it takes to uncover the root cause of a network service problem.

Further, EMC has added SAN Mercury SiteScope support, as well as increased support for OSes, including VMware.

"One of the key success drivers of the EMC Smarts suite has always been its ability to automatically manage highly distributed, complex IT environments spanning a variety of domains," said Chris Gahagan, EMC’s senior vice president of resource management software. "[This] announcement takes this capability even further – better enabling customers to bridge management gaps to enhance reliability of their core business services, which are built atop of these complex IT infrastructures."

Pricing starts at $30,000 for the Express Pack, which includes Smarts SAM, IP-AM with a 50 device license, an SNMP Trap Adapter, SYSLOG, and one Global Console.

For more information about EMC Smarts, go here.

Posted by Ted Samson on December 12, 2006 02:18 PM

November 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Certeon to boost its WAN accelerators with Open XML support

If your enterprise is geographically distributed, and you run applications across your WAN, you'll find that the apps run slowly because of high latency, limited bandwidth, packet loss, and contention. Several vendors have addressed this problem with packet-level compression and differencing; relative newcomer Certeon digs deeper into the packets than its competitors, down to the level of application-level documents.

Certeon has had WAN accelerator devices in the field since February that support Web apps using HTTP and HTTPS, Microsoft Office 2003, and Oracle eBusiness Suite. This Monday, the company will be announcing support for Microsoft Office 2007, SharePoint 2007, and their Open XML document formats, as well as for Exchange messages and attachments, in its S-Series Application Acceleration Appliances. This actually means more than initially meets the eye.

The Open XML file formats use ZIP compression. ZIP compression reduces document size, but it also inhibits additional compression. As it turns out, Open XML also makes it harder for a WAN accelerator to use document differencing to increase transmission speed. Certeon has overcome these problems using an acceleration "blueprint" that understands how to decompress, decompose and difference Open XML documents. The net result is an overall 300% to 600% improvement in the transmission of changed files compared to standard acceleration methods, according to the company's lab results.

Posted by Martin Heller on November 3, 2006 10:12 AM

September 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Interop news and software licensing

So long 'til next year: Another Interop show has come and gone, but some of the announcements and products at the New York show caught the eyes of our Test Center analysts. Brian Chee likes the conversion "doodads" from Transition Networks. Oliver Rist is still giddy about the storage possibilities of Iomega's REV 70 drive, but dishes about remote connection tech in the Emerging Enterprise podcast. Need more to satisfy your networking fix? We've got a slew of reviews in our Top Rated product listings.

License and registration, please: Remember when you paid for software based on the number of people using it? Or the number of processors running it? Well, the "good ol' days" are gone, thanks to dual-core processors, software as a service, and plenty of other innovations that are wreaking havoc with software licensing models. Check out our special report and find out how you'll have to pay for software in the (very near) future.

Recent Reviews: The Test Center adds a review of Vizioncore's esxRanger 2.0 to its virtualization bounty, marking this VM-backup plug-in as one to watch. And the speedy Mac Pro gets run through the gauntlet by Tom Yager, who likes the amount of storage that lies behind the desktop's pretty face.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 26, 2006 12:00 PM

September 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Foundry takes aim at smaller-scale biz

Foundry Networks has had a busy year. First, they rolled out the ServerIronGT high-end 10 Gigbit Ethernet switches in January. In late June, they pulled the covers off the mid-range ServerIron Plus appliances.

Now, they're taking a shot at smaller-scale enterprises with the ServerIron 4G family, announced last week at Interop and expected to be available in early October.

The ServerIron 4G and 4G-SSL put an emphasis on high-availability and security for Web-enabled apps at a lower price: according to Foundry, the switches come in $20,000 to $25,000 less than comparable switches from F5 and Cisco.

"From a performance standpoint, this switch will compare more to their midlevel products," says Gopala Tumuluri, director of product marketing for Foundry Networks.

"This is for the masses," he explains. "It's got very aggressive pricing [for a] full-featured application switch solution that's really targeting the mainstream enterprises for internal applications and small-scale external applications."

The new switches have redundant, hotswappable power supplies for failover protection, a dedicated processor for management and control and four ports for connectivity (hence the "4G" name), all copper and
fiber dual ports. This allows the "customer to never make a bad choice. However their network is designed, this can slide in pretty easily," says Tumuluri.

As more elite switch features, like integrated hardware for SSL acceleration, trickle down to smaller appliances, the main differentiators between Foundry's 4G switches and their larger brethren are traffic volume and number of users.

This isn't an SMB box, though. "Our primary target is enterprises of 1,000 or over," Tumuluri says, adding that the 4G appliances may be a good fit for remote offices that have apps and services requiring high performance and security features. "Even the very large enterprises may have some internal apps that are so small or used by so few groups in the organization, that they would benefit from a small switch like this."

Pricing for the ServerIron 4G starts at $11,995; the 4G-SSL, which includes SSL acceleration, comes in at $14,995.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 25, 2006 04:35 PM

September 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: The promise of virtualization

All virtualization, all the time:: The se-cret word in the Test Center this week has been virtualization. (So has the word exclusive, for that matter.) Paul Venezia got an exclusive opportunity to try out Scalent Virtual Operating Environment, a solution the company claims to be a truly adaptive datacenter. A bold promise? Perhaps, but the company has come pretty darn close. "Combined with a very attractive and usable Flash-based GUI, V/OE 2.0 is a glimpse of what a truly adaptive datacenter could look like."

Security at an unbeatable price:There may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but there such a thing as a free security tool, according to security-meister Roger A. Grimes. In fact, there's a bunch, and they're well worth the price of downloading (and more). You may not be seeing any nifty new freebies from Sysinternals, since Microsoft bought it a while back. However, Foundstone remains a great source. "Many of Foundstone's tools became instant computer security classics, such as Superscan (an excellent port scanner), Fport (a port enumerator), stress testing tools, and all sorts of malware scanners. These are programs and tools that Foundstone's own expert consultants and penetration testers use during security audits."

Live from Interop NYC: Geek-out-of-paradise Brian Chee isn't the only InfoWorld Test Center contributor at Interop NYC this week. Enterprise Windows columnist Oliver Rist couldn't resist the call of the network gear, either. Check out his Emerging Enterprise podcast from the event in which he talks about the state of the WAFS standard and shares some tips on hooking together near-remote sites with more than just T1 lines.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 22, 2006 06:00 AM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Update: Network Instruments revs for 10GbE

Meeting organizations' increased need for speed, Network Instruments has announced integrated support for 10GbE across its entire product line.

The move makes the company the first to deliver real-time analysis, monitoring and reporting of full-duplex 10GbE networks across all products, according to the company.

The refurbished systems provide full-duplex capture, monitoring and analysis at line rate. Admins can monitor and manage 10GbE networks with over 30 real-time statistics, set alarms to proactively notify on potential problems, and gather long-term trending and reporting.

In addition, features such as application analysis provide key application performance statistics, granular drill-down capabilities to view session-by-session communications, and analysis to quickly diagnose application issues or policy violations.

InfoWorld Test Center Contributing Editor Brian Chee, who is at Interop NY trade show where the announcement was made, had a chance to talk with Douglas Smith, Network Instruments' CE0. "We saw 10gig coming fairly early on and saw 10gig as the next logical step," Smith said of the company's 10GbE move.

Market for 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching equipment reached $302 million in the second quarter of this year. At $302 million, revenue is on pace for more than a billion-dollar annual run rate, according to Dell'Oro Group research.

A networking guru, Chee writes of Network Instruments' line:

"The first really big step came when the industry first started the move to gigabit and the change to full duplex monitoring systems. That experience is reflected by a unified code set through the entire Network Instruments product line. This commitment to a unified code set means that Network Instruments is able to release 10gig on their entire product line instead of a long release cycle as development groups struggle with a heterogeneous product line.

The secret sauce is Network Instruments investment in their NIDNA (Network Instruments Distributed Network Architecture) is their hardware investment that gives them the ability to continue to keep up with line speed packet capture.

Douglas admits that he's an engineer at heart and that's reflected in the company attention to the details of the task. Forensics is a big part of who Network Instruments is and their ability to do stream reconstruction for e-mail and Web forensics is an important feature for network forensics."

(Watch for Brian's reports from InterOP New York in his Geeks in Paradise blog.)

Enabling the 10-gig support in the products is the company's custom-engineered 10GbE capture card designed exclusively by the company.

Network Instruments' new appliances include the 10GbE Probe Appliance, the GigaStor-10 GbE for historical analysis, and the newly released all-in-one 10 GbE analysis system, which includes a local console for portability and isolated troubleshooting.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 19, 2006 12:51 PM

September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Network General digs into app performance

Aiming to better marry network monitoring and application performance management across its product line, Network General today unveiled Network Intelligence Suite, a melding of NetVigil 4.2 and Visualizer 4.2, as well as VoIP Foresnics, the first of several forthcoming Business Container additions to NIS.

Network General bought Fidelia last February, and with that acquired the NetVigil business-service monitoring technology that's now part of NIS. That combination has yielded a solution providing application monitoring integrated with traditional packet-level network and application traffic analysis capabilities.

The end-result, according to Network General, is that IT admins can with NIS enjoy a full view of the overall health of the network, then can drill down and determine specifically what's causing an application to underperform.

"Managing application performance and availability is getting more complex with many architectural styles, such as SOA and others. This introduces a lot more moving parts that can affect application performance and availability, said Milind Govekar, research VP at Gartner. "However, certain IT components, such as the network, are always blamed for poor performance. Thus it is important for IT to invest in application management tools that not only allow them to measure and monitor end user application performance, but also provide root cause analysis capability to proactively identify and rectify application performance problems."

Exemplifying the APM that Network General has melded with Visualizer is the birth of VoIP Forensics, which Network General says gives admins a window for deeply tracking and troubleshooting voice over IP performance, including common statistics such as MOSS score, in real time. It can also send alerts when performance degrades to particular levels.

VoIP Forensics is one of the company's Business Containers, part of the company's Business Forensics solution. Forthcoming containers will deliver drill-down performance views for service level agreements, virtualized environments, and others.

The Network Intelligence Suite, VoIP Forensics, and the 4.2 version of the latest products will be generally available on September 22.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 18, 2006 02:29 PM

June 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Foundry rolls out ServerIron Plus switches, OS security upgrade

Foundry Networks today unveiled a new family of application switches, aimed at filling the need for high-performance equipment that fits in just under 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches.

The ServerIron Plus 350, 450, and 850 switches hone in on Web applications and "triple-play" services (voice, video, data) that are growing in popularity with large enterprises and content providers, says Gopala Tumuluri, director of product marketing for Foundry.

The switches range from three to eight modular slots and include Foundry's WSM7 Web application processor module and a redundant/hot-swappable power supply. All three swiches are available now, with pricing starting at $34,995 for the ServerIron 350-Plus.

Foundry also boosted the security of their TrafficWorks OS, adding a Web firewall and focusing on securing Web applications and preventing attacks such as buffer overflows and session hijacks. Version 9.6 of TrafficWorks, which will include the new firewall features, is expected to be available in August and will be included with new ServerIron switch purchases.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on June 28, 2006 01:08 PM

May 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM automating IT processes

IBM on Wednesday announced Tivoli software and services to automate IT processes in multi-platform environments. Processes are addressed such as managing storage devices, addressing of IT failures and deployment of new software releases and patches.

Products include the IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database and three types of IBM Tivoli Process Manager software, IBM said. The software saves customers from having to manually design and integrate processes individually.

The software, shipping on June 30, includes:

* IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, serving as a platform for integrating an IT service management solution. IT information is discovered and federated across the enterprise.
* IBM Tivoli Availability Process Manager, helping customers understand the impacts of outages and performance issues. It also ensures that a service can be reinstated in the event of failure.
* IBM Tivoli Release Process Manager, automating the deployment of software releases, updates and patches.
* IBM Tivoli Storage Process Manager, for implementing storage management processes with the use of customized workflows.

A Process Manager offering for capacity management is planned for the second half of the year. Subsequent offerings will address areas such as security, compliance and IT financial assessment.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 24, 2006 03:06 PM

May 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

NetScout nGenius Analytics aims to intelligently diagnose network ailments

With an eye toward SOA and VOA, NetScout Systems this week at Interop will announce nGenius Analytics, designed to proactively diagnose applications and networks for problems before they hinder performance.
nGenius Analytics automatically learns networks' behavior patterns, as soon as four days after being set up, and identifies performance anomalies without requiring admins to invest hours into manual configuration and threshold-setting, according to Westford, Mass.-based NetScout.
"The task of accurately identifying and manually diagnosing performance issues will intensify as service-delivery infrastructures become more interdependent with the deployment of n-tier applications, Web services, and SOA," said Jeffrey Nudler, senior analyst at analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates. "To maintain high IT service levels as a result of these looming changes, operations teams will have to deploy technologies enabling granular flow metrics and automated analysis that NetScout is offering with nGenius Analytics."
The nGenius Analytics approach will reduce the number of false alerts sent to IT teams and complaints from end-users, according to the company. In a 2005 survey of IT professionals by Enterprise Management Associates, only 18 percent of respondents reported receiving alerts of application problems prior to notification by a customer or user.
The product ties in to NetScout's Application Fabric Performance Management (AFPM) strategy, aimed at helping enterprises optimize and protect services within the emerging distributed, virtualized architectures, such as SOA and VOA.
Priced at $65,000, nGenius Analytics Version 1.1 is delivered on an appliance and is currently available to complement deployments of NetScout's nGenius Performance Management System.

Posted by Ted Samson on May 1, 2006 03:00 AM

April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Uplogix adds service-level savvy to Envoy

Uplogix today unveiled Version 2.5 of Envoy and Envoy Management Station (EMS). New to the suite, which provides admins with centralized control and remote automated support of distributed networks, is a Service Level Verification (SLV) module, enhanced reporting and centralized management capabilities, Unix server support, and expanded satellite and GPS device coverage,the company said.
The SLV module lets customers measure the performance of critical network services and applications throughout the enterprise. According to the company, the performance data can be combined with network device-specific data to help admins better pinpoint the source of a problem, which Envoy can automatically diagnose and resolve.
"SLV provides IT staff with the data they need to gain better visibility into perceived performance problems. It also strengthens Envoy’s capabilities to automatically diagnose and resolve remote problems, leading to increased service availability at the network’s edge," said Barry Cox, CEO of Uplogix, based in Austin, Texas.
Also new to Version 2.5, Uplogix has enhanced the EMS reporting engine and interface, the company says. User can schedule reports for e-mail delivery and create customized reports. Also, Uplogix has added a visual editor for configuring management policies and supporting business processes. Users can now schedule reports for email delivery as well as create their own customized reports to better manage their IT infrastructure. A new visual editor has been added for configuring management policies from the EMS and supporting user-defined business processes.
The Envoy also now supports Sun Solaris servers, which allows admins to remotely monitor and manage business-critical servers tied to the network.
Additionally, Uplogix has expanded Envoy's satellite communication device coverage to both ND Satcom’s SkyWan product line and iDirect’s Infiniti and Netmodem series of remote satellite modems. Support for GPS devices is also new to Version 2.5, which can provide positioning information during an outage.
The InfoWorld Test Center reviewed a previous version of the Envoy suite earlier this year.

Posted by Ted Samson on April 24, 2006 06:00 AM

April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Network Instruments bolsters Observer with NetFlow and sFlow integration

Network Instruments today revealed a host of enhancements to Observer, the company's flagship network analysis solution.
Among them, Observer offers integration with Cisco NetFlow and HP sFlow data collection. NetFlow, available within most Cisco switches and routers, tracks routed IP traffic through every visible port, and it can deliver high-level application-usage statistics. sFlow, supported by a range of networking and application vendors, offers layer 2 to layer 7 visibilities and provides real-time congestion monitoring, audit trail analysis, and more.
According to Douglas Smith, president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Network Instruments, admins will be able to view the "5,000-foot level" NetFlow and sFlow data from the Observer interface. If a network abnormality is detected, an admin can use Observer to drill down on application performance, review response times, and identify latency.
Also new to Observer is application-analysis support for Citrix, and VoIP analysis support for Avaya and Mitel systems.
Support for NetFlow, sFlow, Citrix Application Analysis, and expanded Avaya and Mitel support is included at no additional cost with Expert Observer, which sells for $2,895.

Posted by Ted Samson on April 24, 2006 01:00 AM

April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Packeteer Brings Application Acceleration to WAN Shaper

Packeteer today announced that Release 8.0 software for its PacketShaper WAN optimization appliances will become available in early May. The new edition debuts an optional TCP and HTTP application acceleration module to complement PacketShaper’s QoS and compression capabilities, and it incorporates header compression and quality statistics for voice and video. Pricing of the Acceleration Module ranges from $250 for the 2Mbps appliance to about $10,000 for the 155Mbps appliance.

PacketShaper Release 8.0, Packeteer

Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:32 PM

April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Fluke Networks aims to ease distributed network managemnt

Giving a new arsenal of tools to admins responsible for maintaining the health of a distributed network, Fluke Networks today announced its integrated Distributed Network Analysis and Monitoring Solution (DNAMS).

The solution equips network admins with the tools to monitor and troubleshoot both local and remote networks, all from a centralized location. "Fluke Networks offers customers a way to meet the challenges associated with maintaining local and remote branch offices," said Lisa Schwartz, solution marketing manager at Everett, Wash.-based Fluke. "Network operations can deal with issues at local and remote offices often times even before users begin seeing problems."

Central to DNAMS is Fluke's OptiView Server, which collects and correlates detailed performance information gathered from OptiView Workgroup Analyzers and OptiView WAN Analyzers placed at remote locations.

The solution also provides automated network diagrams and connection path information of specific network devices down to slot and port level detail to aid troubleshooting, according to Schwartz.

The release of DNAMS comes at a time when distributed networks are becoming increasingly prevalent. "Nearly 90 percent of employees work away from headquarters, and maintaining their productivity requires a solid IT infrastructure and centralized tools to manage it," said Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research.

According to Nemertes, IT organizations can spend anywhere from $9,600 to $48,000 per IT staff person per year on troubleshooting remote network problems. The cost savings with a solution such a Fluke's DNAMS for even a medium sized enterprise can exceed $300,000 per year.

Fluke's Distributed Network Analysis and Monitoring Solution is available now. Pricing varies depending on configuration.

Posted by Ted Samson on April 10, 2006 09:41 AM