Strengthening its switched network business, Bay Networks Inc, of Santa Clara, California, has introduced Optivity Enterprise 7.0, the latest version of its Optivity network management suite for switched local network environments. Based on Bay’s multi-layer topology, Optivity 7.0 comprises a range of tools including Network Atlas, a navigational tool that enables administrators to view both physical and logical network relationships interactively in a switched environment and LANarchitect, claimed to simplify network-wide virtual local network configuration and administration across multiple devices and technologies. The suite also features a range of embedded RMON/-RMON2 such as Bay’s RMON Remote Monitoring-based X-Probe family, whic h now supports Bay’s model 28200 modular Ethernet switch. Bay also announced the StackProbe – the first fruits of its $33m Armon Networking acquisition in March (CI No 2,865) – which Bay touts as the first RMON and RMON2 multi-port probe with PassThru ports designed specifically for switched environments. PassThru port technology enables continuous RMON/RMON2 monitoring of the traffic between critical server attachments and switch-to-switch links. The StackProbe with four Ethernet ports is out now and costs $8,000. Using the topology database created by Bay’s Sphere Autotopology intelligent agent process, Optivity’s Network Atlas displays the relationship between network devices at the network, data link and physical layers. It also enab les the network manager to create, store and retrieve a variety of views of the network. Optivity 7.0 provides integrated and centralized control of Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks supporting Bay System 5000 hubs, Centillion 100 switches, Lattis Cell and Ether-Cell-to-Asynchronous Transfer Mode switches. Priced at $18,000, it also supports Hewlett-Packard Co’s OpenView Network Node Manager, Sun Microsystems Inc SunNet Manager, and IBM Corp’s NetView 6000 for AIX.
