Does it help to buy one vendor's hardware over another's, based on how well that vendor's applications manage its own hardware? To find out, we tested vendor-specific management point products--and found out that it does make a difference. A big difference.

3Com Corp.'s Transcend Enterprise Manager was the most cohesive and mature of all the management point products we tested. The interface was the most uniform across multiple types of equipment, had the best integration and included reliable applications.

However, during our testing, no single application worked across a vendor's entire line of hardware. 3Com came the farthest, providing a common look and feel and decent integration. This was primarily because of our use of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView Network Node Manager as the integration point, but it was obvious that 3Com had begun to think through integration issues.

Our favorite applications were VLAN Status View and LANSentry, and RMON (Remote Monitoring) applications. Both enabled us to look more deeply into the network than any third-party application could. By now, RMON2-based applications have begun to ship, enabling LANSentry to extend its excellent statistical breakdown to non-3Com probes.

Transcend Enterprise Manager 4.2 for Unix, $9,495,
3Com Corp.,
(800) NET-3COM, (408) 764-5000.
www.3com.com/products/dsheets/400193.html