NetQoS Combining Tech With Network Instruments for Retro-Analysis

by Nathan Bragaw
We just entered into a strategic partnership with Network Instruments. Their GigaStor appliance captures and stores all the packets traveling networks for historical packet-level analysis. Our SuperAgent identifies the source of performance problems, application, server, or network, and isolates when and where they are degraded. Together, the products can monitor large networks, isolate performance issues, and provide packet-level analysis specific to the problem.
For example, this allows an engineer to identify a network that is showing slow web performance. The engineer can then drill down to a packet capture that includes network traffic 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the event. This capability is changing the troubleshooting capabilities by replaying network traffic prior to the issue occurring. It’s like having a TiVO for your network.
Engineers get an alert from SuperAgent, identifying the time and location of a network problem. Then you go into GigaStor and sort through the traffic to identify the root cause of the problem. We’re pretty psyched about GigaStor’s ability to reassemble packet streams to recreate e-mails, web pages, IM sessions and VoIP calls.
We call it Retrospective Network Analysis, or RNA for short.
We should have the products completely integrated sometime in the next six months or so. We’ve already started selling Network Instruments’ GigaStor products through our sales team and our Web site.