Walnut Creek, California-based AG Group has begun to ship EtherPeek 1.3, its Macintosh-based network analysis tool, adding protocol decoders for SNMP and MacIP packets and expanded Ethernet card support. The product captures all packets on an Ethernet network and enables for real-time or post-capture analyses. Other features enable analysis of overall network usage and traffic patterns. By including decoders for SNMP and MacIP packets, users of Etherpeek can now click on a packet header in the main Macintosh window display to see the contents of these packets broken out by protocol layers. Test packets can be constructed by copying and pasting from captured packets as well as being created arbitrarily. In addition, the triggering feature can now be set to initiate the sending of one packet or a stream of packets at a specified network event. EtherPeek has been re-designed in a modular format that breaks out hardware interface drivers and packet decoders from the rest of the program. AG Group says the primary benefit of this configuration is that it provides support for newly detected clients and the client is mapped to the nearest server equipped to support its software. As well as the enhanced network analysis, EtherPeek now supports Ethernet interface cards from Apple Computer Inc, 3Com Corp, Asante Corp, Cabletron Inc, Cayman Inc, Compatible Systems Inc, Dayna Communications Inc, Everex Systems Inc, Farallon Inc, National Semiconductor Corp, Network Resources Inc, Novell/Kinetics Inc, Nuvotech Inc, Racal Interlan Inc, Shiva Corp, Technology Works Inc and Tri-Data Systems Inc. And the new release of Etherpeek is Macintosh System 7.0-compatible.
