So you already measure network performance. Here's how you'd measure and troubleshoot the applications that run on that fine network if you had a five- or six-figure budget for it.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [May 8, 2007]

It's beginning to feel like every product pitch we get starts with an acknowledgment that the IT department is expected to do more with less, followed by "buy our product with your newly limited resources."

The pitch from San Jose, Calif.-based Network General contained some nuance. The presentation noted that as IT complexity rises, the IT budget shrinks, but the relative cost of hardware is also shrinking.

The problem, then, is managing new complexity. The hardware is not a significant problem. JBODs are getting cheaper every day.

Brand name
Network General has a recognized brand, says James Messer, technical marketing manager. It was, for a time, part of a merged company (with McAfee) called Network Associates. Two and a half years ago, it was bought out and went private.

Now it is ready to announce some updates, but since we never wrote about the original product, we're taking this opportunity to present the big picture.

The new products, initially announced in September of 2006, are called NetVigil and Visualizer. NetVigil was created by Fidelia, a company that Network General purchased in February of 2006.

Together, the two give businesses a picture of what's going on. Visualizer tracks network performance, and NetVigil tracks the performance of the endpoints (software and hardware). "For example," says Messer, "say I have a database with a 10 second delay, and I find that the delay is occurring in the server, is that delay caused by the memory, CPU, hard drive, or database cache. Let's say I saw a CPU usage spike in NetVigil, I can use Visualizer to find the request that caused the usage spike."

Network General's Sniffer InfiniStream can store up to 15 TB of historical data and can track up to 180 metrics. Messer says that Sniffer is the brand that gives the company name recognition.

The system can deliver a different data set to different teams within the corporation. It can track alarms, and has a patent-pending system to benchmark network performance and send an alarm only if the benchmark is exceeded.

The new stuff
The company recently added the ability to track the performance of VoIP.

This week, it added the ability to track the performance of virtualization. Messer says virtualization can make application tracking quite complex. "When you compare the physical and virtual world, an application running on a virtual server still interacts with routers and servers, but it can be connected to a remote server farm. Our software is able to put everything associated with a single service together."

Pricing and availability
Sniffer InfiniStream 4.0 with Application intelligence starts at $24,495 for a single processor InfiniStream appliance. This product will be available on May 14.

Available immediately, the Network Intelligence Suite 4.5 consists of: a Visualizer 4.5 appliance, starting at $44,995, a Flow Collector pack for Visualizer priced at $10,000, and a license to NetVigil 4.5 that starts at $55,000.

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