tonyf@bcara124.bnr.ca (Tony Farrow) (09/01/90)
We are currently looking at the SGI NetVisualyzer Product to determine if it would be of benefit to our Network Monitoring Group here. Although we plan on performing a "full evaluation" later this fall I do have some questions .... Most of these questions will be formalized to our local SGI sales rep but some of you may have already have the answers... 1) I spoke with Larry Kung/Product Marketing Manager System Software Division on whether there were any plans to migrate the NETSNOOP portion of this software to any other PLATFORMS. ( Our installed base of SGI machines is currently low ). Larry said this was not in the plans? Anyone else heard about this .... 2) In order to reduce the number of machines needed to perform snooping I would like to have one machine with multiple ethernet cards ( maybe 4!) perform the snooping and update the SGI Visualyzer station through another ethernet interface. Has anyone tried this ? Think it is possible ? 3) One of our requirements for network tools is that they provide a method of accessing them out-of-band. Therefore our diagnostic tools do not add to any lan problems we may be using them to solve... (good idea but) it is possible to run SL/IP on the SGI machines? Run snoopstation data back to the Visualyzer via SL/IP ?? 4) The current NETSNOOP product allows paramaters to be passed to it such that we can determine protocol matching. ie netsnoop -c 10 tcp.port=6000 to trap X-Server traffic. However other tools such as netgraph which use netsnoop have no method of passing paramaters to netsnoop to use (of course I may have not RTFMPC (.. man page correctly ;) and I have no manual). We have been able to mv netsnoop and replace it with a shell that fires up the real netsnoop with the paramaters we want so netgraph really shows us the traffic we wish to see. It would be nice to see a CAPTURE facility type interface for netgraph (like the analyzer). 5) Plans for X-Windows ? We currently have a large base of X-Window compatible machines and seeing the NETVISUALYZER ported to X would allow us to display ANALYZER/NETGRAPH screens remotely back to another display. Any one know of a time-frame for this port ? Is SGI moving to an X based platform ? The product allows for an easy visualization of current network TRAFFIC. The graphical interface is very slick and makes it extremely easy to SPOT potential problem areas that are not always entirely obvious through a simple interfaces found in PC based lanalyzers. (At least not that I have seen!.) Some of the User Interface needs work/ as well as a protocol toolkit which I believe is currently/will be developed which will allow you to decode your own PROTOCOLS. Any information of course would be greatly appreciated. If anyone else has seen/purchased/used the NETVISUALYZER your comments would be appreciated as well. thx, tony *--------------------------+----------------------------------------* | Tony Farrow | NetNorth/BITNET: TONYF@BNR.CA | | Internet Systems | | | Bell-Northern Research | UUCP: ...uunet!bnrgate!bcara124!tonyf | | P.O. Box 3511, Station C | Phone: (613)763-4903 ESN: 393-4903 | | Ottawa, Canada K1Y 4H7 | FAX: (613)763-3283 ESN: 393-3283 | *--------------------------+----------------------------------------*
vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) (09/02/90)
In article <1990Aug31.184445.4374@bnrgate.bnr.ca>, tonyf@bcara124.bnr.ca (Tony Farrow) writes: > ... it is > possible to run SL/IP on the SGI machines? Run snoopstation data back to > the Visualyzer via SL/IP ?? > ... You can (or are supposed to be able to) buy SLIP for IRISs. Netsnoop can snoop on such a SLIP link. (That is not relevant to your question.) If the netsnoop traffic is not more than the SLIP link can handle, you can link things as you say. (Notice that a 9.6 SLIP link is >1000 times slower than an ethernet.) There have been demos of NetVisualyzer in distant cities where they used a SLIP link to the SGI Mtn.View campus in order to have a big network for NetVisualyzer to generate prettier pictures. Perhaps the NetVisualyzer experts will comment on your other points. Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com