Focusing on quality of service, Web-based system monitoring, and data traffic flow regulation, a plethora of vendors, including Ipswitch, NetScout Systems, and Ripple Technologies, will roll out a variety of network-management tools at the NetWorld+Interop conference in Las Vegas in two weeks.
Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold 4.0, a network-monitoring tool, adds new events and statistics reporting features as well as group notifications, customised services monitoring, and user-defined device types and icons, according to the company. The product's Web-based interface also has been improved, an Ipswitch user said.
"One of the new features is the ability to actually add and delete hosts from the Web interface," said the user, Phred Boughton, network and telecommunications manager at Accudox, a document printing and distribution service company.
"Previously, I would have had to define a particular map, in essence a table of hosts to be monitored, and I could load and unload a map, but I could not add a host or objects to the map," Boughton said.
Ipswitch's reporting supports enforcement of service-level agreements. The product can complement network management frameworks such as Hewlett-Packard's HP OpenView or IBM's Tivoli system. Priced at $695 for use with Windows systems, the product ships next week.
NetScout, meanwhile, plans to announce NetScout Gigabit Ethernet Probe, which monitors application-traffic flows across high-speed Gigabit Ethernet links on LANs.
Gigabit Ethernet Probe is intended to enable network managers to make the transition from shared LANs to high-speed networks, according to NetScout officials.
Priced at $US24,994, the product ships in July. It supports 1000Base-SX (short-haul/multimode) or 1000Base-LX (long-haul/single-mode) media types, and will work with NetScout's Application Response Time Management Information Base.
Ripple Technologies plans to announce LogCaster 2.0 for Windows NT, for managing applications and NT event logs to ensure server uptime. Providing an early warning system, LogCaster recognises system, application, or network environmental conditions that may cause or potentially cause problems. The product ships this month. Pricing details were unavailable.