Sniffer Investigator offers network performance management features that identify and analyze network problems and may help prevent downtime.

by Wayne Kawamoto [March 13, 2002]

Sniffer Technologies announced Sniffer Investigator, a new mid-range solution that performs network performance management. According to the company, Sniffer Investigator is a cost-efficient, plug 'n play network performance management solution that offers customers comprehensive features to rapidly identify and analyze network problems.

Using Sniffer Technologies' Expert Analysis technology and more than 280 communications protocol decodes, the Sniffer Investigator solution allows customers to view, capture, analyze, and monitor Internet, Exchange e-mail, and Oracle Database traffic network performance.

With Sniffer Investigator, customers may be able to pinpoint, analyze, and resolve basic security problems, performance bottlenecks, and network outages. Sniffer Investigator runs on its own laptop and provides network managers with a ready-to-use, turn-key solution to perform analysis and monitoring of a network.

Key features behind the Sniffer Investigator solution include:

Expert Analysis: Sniffer Investigator incorporates Sniffer Technologies' Expert Analysis technology. With Expert Analysis, Sniffer Investigator helps customers pinpoint the root cause(s) of network problems. The software should also intelligently define and explain probable solutions to the problem.

Filters and Triggers: Sniffer Investigator gives users filter capability based on the monitoring data. According to the company, once a customer identifies abnormal activity (i.e. the Nimda worm, Myparty worm), creating a filter from the Host Table and/or Matrix Map is only a click away. This feature should give customers the ability to access key data in a short period of time. Customers can also use triggers to detect elusive or intermittent problems that may occur at any hour of the day or night, and take action when the problem occurs-saving the information to disk and automatically alerting a technician.

Protocol Decodes: With more than 280 protocol decodes, Sniffer Investigator provides customers with a set of communication decodes from major industry vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, Novell, Apple, and Oracle. Also, Sniffer Investigator contains a subset of the TCP/IP protocol suite.

Application Response Time (ART): With ART, network managers should be able to baseline client-server port-based transactions over time. Customers can review the 'top ten worst performers' graphs and take proactive measures to avoid future network congestion.

Simultaneous Monitoring and Analyzing: Sniffer Investigator lets customers monitor, analyze, and play back network traffic concurrently within the same user interface.

Optional Reporting: Sniffer Investigator can work in conjunction with the Sniffer Reporter to generate reports that outline segment utilization, top talkers, protocol distribution, and expert symptoms and diagnosis. The company says that Sniffer Investigator is the only product that creates short-term graphical reports.

"Sniffer recognizes that quality of service and network uptime are both very critical factors to the success of an ISP," said Rich van de Groenekan, senior product manager at Sniffer Technologies. "With Sniffer Investigator and its Expert analysis technology, ISPs in the small and medium market now have a complete and reliable solution that allows them to focus on their core business. Sniffer Investigator helps them detect, analyze, and resolve network problems before they become massive, time-consuming issues that can result in network slowdowns or outages—and thousands of lost dollars."

"Being an ISP, we use Sniffer Investigator to locate unusual activities that may be hacker or virus activity," says Jeff Talamini, vice president of IT at LANline Communications. "With the Sniffer Investigator Expert analysis technology, you don't have to be an expert in every network protocol. Sniffer Investigator increases our productivity and saves time in solving our network problems, so we can focus on our core business."

Availability and pricing
Sniffer Investigator is available now and is priced at $7,995, for the entire hardware and software solution.

—End