Using Fluke Network's Optiview, AppDancer's FA Flow Analyzer and the Shomiti Surveyor as my analyzers to be manipulated, I remotely accessed and rerouted the tools to look at different LAN network segments with little fanfare and even less difficulty. I could have looked at WAN links just as easily--the servers don't care which topologies are at the end of the network string. For those unfamiliar with Datacom, the resource-sharing switches are 100 percent fault tolerant, so even my inexperienced hands couldn't inadvertently hose the network in the name of remotely connecting an analyzer to a different network span through the SCS.
Beyond manipulating connections to test equipment, I experimented with local settings and changing switch addresses for daisy-chaining, as well as other basic configuration tasks that came easy with ManAgents and the SCS. After testing the SCS, I couldn't imagine taking on a matrix switching environment without it.
Lee Badman is a network engineer at Syracuse University. Write to him at [email protected].
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