Some of the best IT tools in the world rarely see the light of day because they're just too darn cumbersome. If a product's user interface isn't intuitive, many folks will walk away in a hurry. And with a growing number of software-based network-management and -troubleshooting suites available, many IT staffers succumb to the "Ho-hum, they all look the same" syndrome, denying themselves the power that many modern analysis programs pack behind an industry-standard front door. With its new Network Inspector 5.0 network-monitoring software, Fluke Networks seeks to overcome both the "overcomplex" and the "all too familiar" stumbling blocks. The product not only looks and feels fresh, but provides a wealth of new tools.

Network Inspector 5.0 succeeds version 4.1 but isn't merely an enhanced retread. Redesigned as a mostly new platform, the product rapidly found favor during our tests at Network Computing's Real-World Labs® at Syracuse University. Finding a PC on which to install the tool was easy; Network Inspector 5.0 will run on machines loaded with Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5 or later) or Windows 2000 (Service Pack 1 or later). Installation was quick and painless, and the process left two new icons on my desktop. One was for Network Inspector Agent, the engine that gathers a slew of network data and characteristics; the other was for Network Inspector Console, which provides the GUI for material ferreted out of TCP/IP, IPX and NetBIOS environments by the agent.

Almost instantly after start-up, hundreds of device names from my network segment were displayed, with a variety of deeper looks at each only a click away. Version 5.0 effectively supports 75 switches and 2,000 nodes on a switched network or subnet, and high device counts didn't slow down the program on my 866-MHz desktop machine. Servers, clients, switches, routers, printers and Fluke Networks' devices deployed in the enterprise keep no secrets from Network Inspector. Each device on the network accurately showed itself in effective detail, from MAC (Media Access Control) address to nearest switch and port to utilization data. In the first few seconds of a session, I discovered two machines using a duplicate IP address and a client that was erroneously acting as a name server.

Users can define problems of varying severity. When I set up Network Inspector's onboard notification feature to e-mail my pager should a certain switch no longer respond to SNMP overtures, the process was on the money every time I removed the switch's uplink.

My only complaint is that, on the main page of Network Inspector, the icons that represent the discovered devices are not customizable. It would be useful to be able to select a unique symbol for special devices; in my case one for IP phones would have been helpful. Without this ability, all nonserver, nonrouter and nonprinter hosts look the same. To the credit of Fluke's design team, its representatives were very receptive to the suggestion of expanding the icon library in a later release.

Fluke Network Inspector 5.0 (screen view) Click here to enlarge

Also to Fluke's credit, every device identified by Network Inspector is one click away from a user-initiated ping, trace-route or Web-console session through the Tools tab. And on top of all the typical capabilities you'd expect to see in such a product, Network Inspector does a solid job of performance trending--up to seven days worth (short-term baselining made easy).

To keep the reporting from getting too large to be useful, you can set trending parameters based on devices and interfaces with different data rates. Network Inspector generates reports not only from the trending analysis but also on the most common critical statistics, such as collision rates, utilization, error rates and inventory of devices per protocol, among other useful options. Noticeably absent, however, are RMON tools, which you might expect to see in products priced comparably with Network Inspector.

One nice touch is the Logo Manager, which lets you replace the default Fluke "Inspector" logo with any JPEG or BMP image you choose. The powerful MG-Soft Corp. MIB Browser is also included for MIB viewing and analysis, as is a slew of tools for the MIB savvy.

If Network Inspector's device discovery and performance trending don't quite take you where you need to be in terms of network analysis, perhaps the platform's SwitchTap feature will get you closer. For the Cisco Systems switches in my test environment, correctly mirroring ports was no more difficult than entering proper community strings for the switch under scrutiny and choosing which port or ports I wanted to monitor. Through SwitchTap, you can mirror entire VLANS (virtual LANs) on most Cisco and Extreme Networks switches for traffic analysis.

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

Not only does Network Inspector 5.0 give you several avenues for the proverbial drill down, but it also has extremely powerful diagramming abilities compliments of its tight integration with Microsoft's Visio 2000 and Visio 2002. Any device search you choose will expertly translate itself to a detailed Visio 2000 drawing, which can be examined with a wide range of granularity. In seconds, a complete network can be represented in seemingly countless schemes, with all varieties showing connectivity information among many other details. The act of accurate diagramming, to port level in most cases, is reduced from hours and days to only seconds and minutes.

Vendor Information Network Inspector Monitoring Software Version 5.0, starts at $5,995. Available: Now. Fluke Networks, (800) 283-5853; (425) 446-4519; fax (425) 446-5019. www.flukenetworks.com

As part of Fluke Network's SuperVision suite of network tools, Network Inspector 5.0 was designed to work with other products in the Fluke line, including OneTouch, LANMeter and OptiView. Our testing involved OptiView in several scenarios. We were fortunate to have a beta unit of "distributed" OptiView (to be released in the first quarter of 2002), which provided the means of bringing remote networks--those that were within two router hops of Network Inspector--under the same detailed scrutiny as the directly connected network. When you use OptiView as a remotely deployed probe for Network Inspector, your ability to manage, troubleshoot, diagram and trend large network environments grows exponentially. With a single click, the user can toggle between the remote or directly connected networks with absolutely full functionality on all networks.

Although packet captures, activities at the upper layers and long-term trending are not part of Network Inspector 5.0's gig, the product does go far beyond the Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold-class programs in both functionality and ease of use. Network Inspector 5.0 by itself is a robust network-administration product, and when combined with mates like OptiView 2.0, it's a very respectable force.