SynOptics Corp has signed a strategic development agreement with Menlo Park, California-based Network General Corp to provide support for the latter’s Distributed Sniffer System network analysis offering in its network management portfolio. Simultaneously, Santa Clara, California-based SynOptics announced the first fruits of the agreement, Advanced Analyzer agent software, for its family of intelligent hubs, which is due to ship next month. The agreement with Network General has two phases: under phase one, users of SynOptics’ Optivity 5.0 network management system, which is due to ship next month, will receive a cut-down version of Distributed Sniffer. This is claimed to provide a subset of Network General’s protocol decodes, RMON remote monitoring filtering, topology statistics, and a duplicate Internet Protocol access monitor and response time monitor. Network managers will then have the option of upgrading to a full version of the Distributed Sniffer including full RMON support and expert analysis tools. The second phase will be an ongoing development; it is designed to provide monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for switched local networks andAsynchronous Transfer Mode environments. These capabilities are scheduled for the first quarter of next year. The agent software launched in preparation for Optivity 5.0 is said to provide RMON capabilities for both Ethernet and Token Ring networks and can be used with SynOptics’ Lattis System 2000, 3000 and 5000 hubs. According to SynOptics, it can be used to retrieve information on protocol distribution and port-to-network address association in order to isolate and resolve network problems. SynOptics has also launched new applications which, it says, enable the analyser agents to correlate analyser information with the existing hub management capabilities of the hubs. This, says SynOptics, will enable managers to determine the cause of problems and locate their physical location, right down to port level. Optivity can also use the agents to determine the optimum network configuration for switched networks. The agent software can be purchased with new SynOptics hub hardware, and is also available as a free agent software upgrade for existing users.
