Gazing into networking's crystal ball to predict performance often produces little more than a hazy image. But Concord Communications, Kaspia Systems and Network Associates all attempt to see into the uncertain future through the magic of their network baseline products.

Ultimately, Network Health gave us the clearest and most accurate view of what lay ahead in our network performance testing. The canned, yet flexible, reports offered us an eye into the future from various perspectives.

The magic that makes this happen is somewhat buried in Concord's Health Indexes, which quantify uncertainties such as "Is this enough bandwidth?" and "Are these too many errors?" This is trickier than it might sound. After all, if you asked every network engineer how to tell when a network is doing well and how to know when it is in trouble, you'd get as many different suggestions as you'd have engineers. Network Health does a good job of exposing for customization the calculations from which quality assessments are derived according to the quantity of information collected.

Network Health 4.0, starts at $20,000,
Concord Communications,
(800) 851-8725, (508) 460-4646.
www.concord.com