jarmond@infonode.ingr.com (Don Jarmon) (02/05/91)
I have taken on the task of evaluating various models of network
analyzers. I was looking for user response before filling out the
P.O. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
--
Don Jarmon ...uunet!ingr!dj4104!don (UUCP)
( 205 ) 730-4104 don@dj4104.ingr.COM (INTERNET)
* Intergraph Corporation, Mail Stop CR041, Huntsville, Ala, 35894-0001 *young@helix.nih.gov (Jeff Young) (02/06/91)
how about the Wandel and Goltermann? (DA-30) I saw it at a recent COMNET in washington dc. Looks pretty neat and very functional. They were also one of the few vendors that could tell me that they had a funded project going for fddi. It's multiport (two ethernets at once) and has some wan functionality (with added hardware). It's also portable. I took a look at it because they traded some hardware with cisco for the show. the cisco people seemed to like it. contact Wandel & Goltermann Inc. 1030 Swabia Court P.O. Box 13585 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3585 and please don't forget to tell me what you think of it if you look. -- jy young@alw.nih.gov
morgan@jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) (02/06/91)
> how about the Wandel and Goltermann? (DA-30)
They came by here the other day with one of these babies (it's a
Network Monitor, for those who missed the thread), and it's certainly
quite a package.
What they've done is couple a 386 (SX, I think) PC-on-a-board in the
same chassis as a Transputer-based CPU, and several slots on which
interface cards for different media can be inserted. They showed us
(as I recall) a two-port Ethernet board, which also has a transputer
(a specialized sort-of RISC chip from Inmos) on it. The unit also had
a token ring board in it. You can get X.25 serial too. Each of these
boards has a bunch of memory on it too. It has a small built-in
screen or you can attach a standard PC-style large monitor. Also,
there's a set of LEDs beside the screen that light up to show levels
of network activity.
It does all the usual things with capturing and decoding frames,
triggering on different events, etc. In my biased opinion the decode
display didn't look as good as the Sniffer, but it looked OK. I
believe they intend to sell modules to decode different protocol
suites as separate items.
The hip thing is that the transputer part can run serious programs
independently of the PC part. They even provide a built-in
programming language (I think I heard something about compiling into
Occam, the language usually associated with the Transputer) that you
can use right on-screen, with lots of built-in network-related
constructs. Once you've written them (or bought them, I suppose), the
programs can be executed from a menu.
One example program they showed us generated traffic on the net,
lighting up their traffic-level LEDs in sequence, one per keystroke.
One could imagine programs that did lots of things in terms of
capturing data, generating frames based on captured stuff, etc.
Output files are saved as DOS and can be sent across the net if you
wish.
All in all it's pretty impressive. The rub: it starts at $40K.
Their access info was in the previous message.
- RL "Bob" Morgan
Networking Systems
Stanfordklefstad@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Sue Klefstad) (02/07/91)
PC Week (Nov. 26, 1990) compared five LAN Analyzers: Cabletron's LANView, HP's 4972A LAN Protocol Analyzer, Network General's Sniffer, Novell's LANalyzer, and Spider's Spider Analyzer. -- -- Sue -- ========================================================================= Sue Klefstad Ill. Natural History Survey klefstad@uiuc.edu
hayes@blaise.trl.OZ.AU (Mark Hayes) (02/12/91)
In article <1991Feb4.221957.23993@infonode.ingr.com>, jarmond@infonode.ingr.com (Don Jarmon) writes: > I have taken on the task of evaluating various models of network > analyzers. I was looking for user response before filling out the > P.O. Thanks in advance for any feedback. > I would suggest that any potential purchasers of LANalyzers should firstly look carefully at their requirements, eg. is it more important to capture every packet to the buffer or is the format and presentation of the data more important. The next thing to do is get one of each machine and test it in your own environment without the sales rep. being present. This way you can determine how easy it is to use and how well it performs without being pressured by the sales rep. When we were looking for a LANalyzer we tested a few in our lab under test conditions which were rather extreme, but were indicative of our requirements. Our prime requirement was that it capture *ALL* packets to the buffer (until full). It was interesting to discover that only one machine was able to meet this criterion, dispite the claims of the other vendors! It was also interesting to discover which machines were easy and intuitive to use and those which were cumbersome. We also discovered what we concluded were faults in a couple of machines, in that they reported wrong events, eg. runts which never occurred. Another factor which may need to be taken into consideration is the easy of programming the machine to perform tests such as send a packet and time the delay until a reply is received, etc. I must say that we had a good time over a couple of weeks stressing these LANalyzers and putting pressure back onto the sales reps! I hope these comments may be of use to some people. Cheers, mdh ps. We purchased the HP4972A as it was the only one which captured all packets at all traffic levels. It is also quite a nice machine to use once you know your way around and I enjoy programming tests which cut down our measurement times from 5 days to 1 day. Our main application is basically development and testing rather than network monitoring. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Hayes Research Labs, m.hayes@trl.oz.au Telecom Australia