How Will You Ever Manage?
Managing an enterprise network is no easy task. Sprinkle in ATM and all its features--VLANs (virtual LANs), PNNI (Public Network-to-Network Interface) routing, point-to-point connections and LANE (LAN Emulation) services--and you get a real mess. While testing ATM backbone switches, we looked at the vendors' management packages. Overall, we weren't impressed. Packages from FORE Systems and Xylan Corp. showed the highest degree of integration, but neither was overly intuitive. Both provided a signific
ant amount of control over the switched network, however, without forcing you to dive into the switch's console.
FORE Systems ForeView
The FORE NMS (network management system) includes a topology discovery tool that will automatically build a map of your network. Once topology discovery is complete, you can use the NMS to manage individual switches through a front-panel interface. We were quite satisfied that we could create static ATM routes and set port signaling information from the GUI. The FORE interface also made VLAN creation a breeze. The software transparently created all the services necessary to run a port-based VLAN on an edge device. Our biggest complaint about ForeView was its responsiveness--or lack of it. ForeView inches along even on a 200-MHz Pentium Pro with 128 MB of RAM. FORE engineers insist they're working on improving response time for the 5.0 release.
Xylan OmniVision
The Xylan NMS features tightly integrated frame and cell management, partly because the Xylan OmniSwitch was the only product we tested that allowed frame-based cards (Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, FDDI and Token-Ring) to plug into the chassis. The Xylan NMS lets you effectively define and control VLAN and PVC (permanent virtual circuit) connections through the NetworkDirector package. With Xylan's OMNI-MSS, it is possible to integrate LANE services and VLAN management into a single drag-and-drop GUI. The OMNI-MSS provides all LANE services in a Xylan network. When it comes to VLAN management, Xylan has things well organized. The Xylan AutoTracker utility notifies you of moves, adds and changes in the network, and it lets you create VLANs on the fly. Xylan's VLAN capabilities are undoubtedly the best in the industry, with support for VLANs based on port, MAC (Media Access Control) Address, Layer 3 information or even user authentication. The VLAN management capabilities of Xylan's AutoTracker reflect this. The Xylan NMS also lets you configure individual switches from a fr
ont-panel view. Overall, the OmniVision NMS suite was the most integrated solution we tested.
Olicom Switch Manager
Olicom took the KISS approach to network management: Keep it simple, stupid. The package offers no topology-based management--that is, no map view of your infrastructure. What Olicom has implemented is a simple method for managing switches on a per-switch basis. The Olicom GUI gives you complete access to every feature of the switch, including LANE services, PNNI setup, PVC setup and software revision control. Furthermore, the NMS lets you create a test setup--one that will be executed only until the switch is rebooted. This is an extremely handy feature for testing new software revisions and configuration changes. We found the Olicom NMS easy to use and full-featured. If every panel-view utility were as powerful as the Olicom NMS, there would be no need for command-line interfaces.
Madge Networks Montage
Madge Montage is a collection of applications for managing Madge infrastructure products. The Montage NMS will discover Madge devices on your network and build a map from these products. Clicking on a product will bring up TrueView, the Madge GUI front-panel view. From TrueView, you can manage most aspects of the switch setup, including LANE services, static routes and PVCs. TrueView was the only application to offer a reasonable ATM statistics package. This window lets you see at a glance which ports on your network are most utilized. The statistics are based on AMON (ATM Monitoring) standards, though we have yet to see another package that will decode this information.
Cisco Systems ATM Director
Although Cisco didn't have a release version of its ATM NMS for Windows, it did send a recent beta. ATM Director and Traffic Director for Windows are being built around a Java back end for portability reasons. The software looked spiffy, but it lacked functionality. We were only able to bring up a front-panel view of
the LightStream 1010, and that didn't let us do much in the way of configuration. The Traffic Director and ATM Director applications easily discovered our production network, including two Cisco routers, a Cisco Catalyst 5000 and the 1010. From here, we could configure the front panels of the different devices. However, contrary to the documentation's suggestions, we weren't able to view per-VC (virtual circuit) statistics. Perhaps the final version will offer more functionality.
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