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Finger-pointing was an art form among vendors in the early '90s, and Sniffer was the network administrator's best hope for getting to the bottom of a problem. With Sniffer on the job, if an application vendor blamed the network for user-response-time problems, the network engineer was freed from being at the mercy of the network-equipment salesperson offering a solution. In fact, more often than not, Sniffer would reveal that the network wasn't the problem at all. More important, it would usually provide details that could be used to cut right through unproductive bouts of accusation.

Unlike earlier datascopes, Sniffer was designed as a software product and relied on hardware vendors, such as Compaq Computer Corp., Dolch Computer Systems and Toshiba, to provide the necessary hardware. This allowed Network General to focus on providing functional, cost-effective software, and to immediately take advantage of platform improvements as they hit the market.

Network General, while continually adding new decodes to Sniffer, stuck with a funky DOS-based menu interface long after GUIs became the norm. While the product was derided at times for this old-fashioned look and feel, it was hard to argue with the company's contention that the Microsoft Windows OS wasn't efficient enough to keep up with network traffic that flew by at megabits per second. In any case, anyone who used the Sniffer on a regular basis learned to zip around the menus using the function and arrow keys faster than you could say "point-and-click."

In 1991, when larger networks were starting to sprawl across bridges and routers, Network General introduced the Distributed Sniffer System. With it, network engineers could monitor remote problems from their desks or network-operations centers, without having to run back and forth to distant wiring closets.

Also during 1991, Network General added the "Expert" feature in version 4.0. Sniffer Expert hasn't put network engineers out of their jobs, but it has enabled them to identify some of the more common network problems much more quickly, without sifting through decodes packet by packet.

Throughout the 1990s, Network General continued to add to its vast repertoire of decodes. By 1995, when the client/server movement was peaking, decodes for the major SQL databases from Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase were available. Here again, the value lay not so much in determining network problems, but in providing a way to observe applications that happened to run over the network from a vantage point that could be afforded only by the network. Network engineers gained the ability to help programmers and system administrators understand how their code was behaving on the network and how well servers were responding to SQL database transactions across the network.

Prior to Network General's merger with McAfee Associates in 1997, which resulted in the formation of the company known as Network Associates, it had purchased Cinco Systems, maker of a product called Net X-Ray. The Cinco acquisition gave Sniffer a badly needed Windows-based interface, as well as complementary hardware assistance that helped the product keep up with the higher data rates of Fast Ethernet.

As the complexity of networks continues to increase, so will the need to keep those networks running smoothly. Switched networks have changed Sniffer's job, but when careful inspection of network traffic is mandated, Sniffer is still one of the best products in the business.