AG Group Inc’s new network management software for the Apple Computer Macintosh, Skyline/E, provides managers of mixed vendor, multiple-protocol networks with a graphic history of Ethernet network traffic and usage provided in the form of a skyline chart. As network management packages go, this one is a fairly simple affair – giving information on traffic levels and protocol types but little else – a simplicity which is reflected in its US list price of $700. The company is promoting the product as an everyday monitoring device, rather than for troubleshooting. It’s not really powerful enough for that latter role, more suitable for looking for peaks and valleys in network flow, and determining stress points over time. The company also makes much of its ease of use, saying that the product is aimed at people that want to learn a bit about network management. But is it the start of something – an environment onto which other functions will be bolted? Not according to David Beurk, the company’s marketing manager. Instead, AG will make use of Apple Events, the inter-application communication system built into System 7 to link a number of applications together. This is a better approach, says Beurk, than trying to build a single all-singing-all-dancing program. In pursuing this policy, Skyline/E already includes the ability to execute Etherpeek the diagnosticscompany’s Macintosh-based protocol analyser automatically when a pre-set network threshold is reached. Unlike Etherpeek, Skyline/E itself cannot perform low-level analysis decoding, the Ethernet packet header type information is as far as it delves. The unusual choice of the Macintosh as a foundation was based, says Beurk, both on the ability to link applications together in the way described and the machine’s memory management, which makes it easy to capture large amounts of data to disk. The new product’s name poses the question that, since there is a Skyline/E, when we can expect to see a Skyline/T? Though the company is making no announcements, Buerk described as a good guess the suggestion that a Token Ring product is in the pipeline. Unlike higher powered protocol analysers, AG’s products use standard Ethernet interface boards; being cheaper, the approach does have the significant problem that it loses packets at high network throughputs – which is exactly where the product is most likely to be needed.
