NetAnalyzer: A retrospective network analysis tool
P Sundareswaran, Salim Hariri · International Journal of Computers and Applications · 1997
A wide range of public domain and commercial tools currently exist to help network administrators manage networks. However, most of these are real-time analysis tools, and so provide more support in monitoring network activity. A very small subset of these tools assist the network administrator and/or designer in reconfiguring the network as well as identifying optimal resource allocations. The goal of the tool described in this paper is to help in designing and/or reconfiguring of networks for optimal allocation of both clients and file-systems in a distributed computing environment. This paper describes NetAnalyzer, a retrospective network analysis tool running under SUN UNIX (4.1.3) Operating System. The tool uses a utility to passively collect statistics on an Ethemet-based distributed computing environment by operating the interface in a promiscuous mode. The tool allows the user to obtain statistics on the Ethernet utilization, analyze the traffic between the subnetwork of a partitioned network, and also provides comprehensive knowledge of how the various file-system partitions on every server are used in the system. This information would assist the network administrator in reconfiguring the network to meet its requirements in a cost-effective manner.