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F E A T U R E

Orchestream Conducts PBNM with Precision

January 21, 2002
By Bruce Boardman

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How We Tested Policy-Based Network Management Software


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We set up a network comprising switches and routers from Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks and Juniper Networks (see diagram, below). We routed all three vendors' management stations onto this network for the purposes of network discovery, configuration retrial and configuration setting. For both Dorado Software and Orchestream products, we set QoS parameters on supported devices, and for Orchestream, we set up MPLS VPNs.

We graded each product on its ability to manage and set configurations, which included populating a database with the devices. We didn't subtract or add points for autodiscovery of network devices because this generally is a flawed process in network-management applications. However, we did look at how the inventory of the network was applied. For example, were the devices and interfaces categorized, and were those categories usable in sending policy to devices?

Test Setup

Click here to enlarge

We also looked for the event process to notify us of exceptions and audit policy as we set it. The more meaningful out-of-the-box preconfigured events, the better. And we examined whether the products intelligently categorized the type of event -- informational, warnings, errors -- and monitored correlation of interevent status. For example, when an error is fixed, the current status of the device should indicate no errors, but the audit log should show the event history.

Finally, we looked at the granularity of the access control to determine how much application access was possible and if access could be shared if multiple external and internal groups might need access.

In determining the pricing we defined three scenarios: a single site with 100 managed interfaces, a dual-management site with 1,000 managed interfaces and a 10-location site with 10,000 managed interfaces. We determined there would be at least two device-driver families required in each scenario. For example, we assumed that both Cisco and Juniper gear was being managed. We also didn't specify the number of servers; rather we let the architecture of the product determine if multiple servers were needed to support multiple sites, as Gold Wire and Orchestream did. The pricing information provided is meant as merely a reference and does not address discounts, fault tolerance, required hardware or implementation costs.