Network Monitoring Systems: Page 3 of 19

LANsurveyor 8.5, $495 plus $249 for continuous-scan IDS option; support and upgrades included. Neon Software, (800) 334-6366. www.neon.com

This network-management extravaganza made us feel like kids in a candy store. It has oodles of tools to design IP addresses, hack security, diagnose connectivity, break down SNMP MIBs, block e-mail and manage Cisco configurations. But we passed on all these treats and headed straight for the network discovery, monitoring and performance goodies that most closely fed this review's management craving.

The Engineer's Toolset is, as its name implies, a handy collection of applications. However, the collection doesn't include or create a common database with inventories of all the devices in a network. We had to specify the IP addresses for each of the tools. For this reason, our features chart (page 88) indicates no automated discovery. But don't take that to mean that there's no discovery, period. In fact, the Toolset's discovery options are extensive. Beginning with ping scans, progressing to a DNS audit, jumping to a deep SNMP sweep, and finishing with a MAC address and Layer 2 switch port mapper, this product has the most varied and deep network and system discovery of all those we tested.

And discovery is fast. All the devices on our subnet were found in less than 30 seconds. The results screen popped response time, DNS name and system MIB information in a flash.

The product's network monitoring and performance tools don't limit the number of watched devices. After adding our chosen devices, we selected which interfaces to monitor. Instead of showing us a MIB table with an option to choose ifInOctets or inOutOctets, our choices were to see traffic or errors. Although somewhat limited, this setup gets to the heart of what most will monitor.