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Foundation Manager

Foundation Manager, a product of Network General Corp., is a sophisticated SNMP Network Management System (NMS) platform that operates on Intel-based computers using different versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Foundation Manager was recently upgraded to support the emerging RMONv2 standard. When used to gather statistics from an RMONv2-compatible probe, it can provide a summary of statistics through the application layer, allowing it to replace the use of multiple products to obtain equivalent information.


Exhibit 5.  Network General’s Foundation Manager.

Exhibit 5 illustrates the use of Foundation Manager to monitor a local Token Ring network. In the example shown in Exhibit 5, two buttons under the Local Token Ring Monitoring bar were pressed to initiate two displays of information from the Token Ring Statistics Group that an RMON probe on the local network accumulates. The first button clicked on is the bar chart icon to the right of the icon with the upraised hand in the form of a stop sign. Clicking on the bar chart icon results in the display of the top row of eight bar charts that indicate the total number of different types of frames and level of network utilization.

For example, the second bar chart located on the left side of the top display indicates that network utilization is at 3% on a 100% basis. Other bar charts on the top row indicate the current number of logical link control (LLC) bytes and frames, multicast frames, broadcast frames, beaconing frames, purge events, and claim events. The second row of bar charts in Exhibit 5 resulted from clicking on the third icon to the right of the raised hand icon. This sequence of ten bar charts indicates the distribution of Token Ring frames in a manner similar to the method that EtherVision used to summarize Ethernet frame sizes. Foundation Manager follows the RMON standard and provides a more detailed breakdown of the distribution of Token Ring frames by their length.


Exhibit 6.  Foundation Manager QuickStats Display.

Similarly, when using Foundation Manager to monitor Ethernet networks, the program retrieves RMON probe-kept frame distribution information that is more detailed than that kept by EtherVision. However, it is important to note that the retail price of EtherVision is under $500 and it can operate by itself. In comparison, the retail price of Foundation Manager is approximately $5000 and a single probe can cost approximately $1000, requiring an investment of an additional $5500 to obtain an enhanced level of frame size distributions as well as some additional features.

Two of the more interesting features of Foundation Manager are its Quick Stats and discovery and baselining capabilities. Exhibit 6 illustrates the use of the Foundation Manager Quick Stats feature to display a quick set of statistics for a remotely monitored network. In the example shown in Exhibit 6, statistics for an RMON probe connected to a network located in San Diego are displayed.

Foundation Manager is capable of displaying up to eight Quick Stats graphical reports at one time, with each report generated by clicking on an appropriate icon to the right of the icon with the raised hand in the form of a stop sign.


Exhibit 7.  The Local Discovery and Baselining Capability of Foundation Manager.

Each Quick Stats display presents summary information about a monitored network in a similar manner. In examining the statistics display for the network located in San Diego that is shown in Exhibit 6, the upper left display presents a distribution of frame length for the monitored LAN as a horizontal bar chart. The upper right portion of the display contains four gauges that provide a real-time view of network utilization, bytes transmitted, broadcast traffic, and frame rate. The lower half of the display shows a real-time plot over a period of predefined length for any two of the gauge values. Thus, the use of the Foundation Monitor Quick Stats display provides users with the ability to visually note important network baseline parameters both in real-time and over a period of time.

A second interesting feature built into Foundation Manager is its discovery and baselining capability. This capability is available for both local and remotely located networks being monitored, and provides the ability to gather pattern flow information that can be extremely valuable when attempting to determine if the cause of a high level of network utilization results from the activity of one or a few stations on the network.

Exhibit 7 illustrates the Foundation Manager local discovery and baselining display as a matrix map of network activity. The first portion of the title of the display, “discovery,” results from the fact that the probe examines each frame flowing on the monitored network and discovers its source and destination by examining the source and destination addresses contained in the frame. The second portion of the title of the display, “baselining,” results from the fact that Foundation Manager extracts information from a matrix table maintained by the probe that denotes the number of frames transmitted from one address to another. Thus, in examining Exhibit 7, such numerics as 1, 2, 27, 14, 58, 5, and 96 represent the number of frames transmitted from the address located in the row in the table to the address in the column portion of the table.

When baselining a network, matrix information should be considered as a mechanism to identify the cause of high network utilization. If Quick Stats or a similar display denotes a low level of network utilization, there is no need to use the matrix capability of Foundation Manager or a similar product to identify the actual flow of data between network stations. This is because even if the user can locate a station using too much bandwidth, a modification of the operation of the station will, at best, have a negligible effect upon improving network performance if the network already has a low level of utilization.

CONCLUSION

Baselining is an important process that enables the communications manager and LAN administrator to quantify the status and activities of a network. In doing so, it provides a base of information that enables network trends to be identified, which can allow changes to be made to a network infrastructure prior to network capacity becoming an issue. Thus, network managers and administrators should consider using the tools and techniques described in this chapter as a mechanism to baseline their network infrastructure.


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