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When your LAN suddenly goes on the fritz, how do you track down and remedy the problem?
The LAN management software products in this week's Product Lineup certainly can help.
The Lineup chart beginning on page 50 compares two dozen leading software-based offerings that are designed to give you a window into what's happening on your LAN-and a resource to turn to when things aren't happening as they should.
LAN management sounds simple enough, but what exactly is it?
That's the key question we had to address while scouring the market for a valid apples-to-apples product comparison.
It's Not Systems Management
For example, the distinction between LAN management and systems management is particularly fuzzy. This Lineup focuses on LAN management; for a summary comparison of 60 systems management software tools from 50 vendors, see the April 10 issue of Communications Week.
Systems management software products tend to focus more on the hardware configuration and applications and system software running on user workstations and servers. Some of those products also provide for detailed monitoring of the network connections of individual, managed systems. Indeed, a few of the products in that comparison-such as Intel Corp.'s rich LANDesk package and Novell Inc.'s ManageWise suite of management applications-are also included in this Lineup.
There are other software products offered under the broad umbrella of LAN management that aren't included here. That's because these products didn't perform the basic functions we established for LAN management software. The LAN management software products we sought had to perform two functions that we considered key to managing LANs:
- the software package had to let users monitor the current operational state of all LAN-connected stations, nodes...