Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!nic.csu.net!beach.csulb.edu!csus.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!npd.novell.com!newsun!keith From: keith@ca.excelan.com (Keith Brown) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Looking for comments on network analyzers Message-ID: <1991Apr12.010746.432@novell.com> Date: 12 Apr 91 22:47:35 GMT Sender: news@novell.com ( Lines: 48 The News Manager) Nntp-Posting-Host: ca Reply-To: keith@ca.excelan.com (Keith Brown) Organization: Novell, Inc. San Jose, California References: <5336.27f1d691@cpva.saic.com> <4669@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <6222@male.EBay.Sun.COM> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1991 01:07:46 GMT In article <6222@male.EBay.Sun.COM> elf@oldearth.EBay.Sun.COM (Ed Fleschute) writes: >I'll second the evaluation that Dave has performed. The LANALYZER is >a great tool for doing physical layer analysis. If you are experiencing >hardware problems on a cable the LANALYZER is phenominal at pinpointing >the source of the trouble very quickly. > >The SNIFFER is excellent at higher level protocol analysis. If I was looking >to find a NFS protocol bug I definitly would prefer the SNIFFER. I should start out by explaining that I *don't* work in our (the Novell) Lanalyzer product division so I'm sort of unbiased, but in a biased kind of way :-) I'm a NetWare NFS type. Anyway.... Have you seen release 3.X of the Lanalyzer software? The folks in the Lanz division have really cranked on the protocol decodes since release 2.X. Flicking through lanz traces of our general backbone traffic there is now hardly a packet passes across our LAN that the Lanz doesn't break out for me. Just recently I was flicking through a packet trace and was horrified to discover that the thing obviously knows more about the SNMP protocol than I do (I had no idea it decoded SNMP!) :-). Also, all these decodes are built into the product. I understand Network General still charge extra for every stack? Another great new feature is its ability to automatically generate mneumonic name files for Mac addresses. We have lots of Macs and NetWare servers (surprise, surprise :-) on our backbone and it now comes with a canned experiment that fires out the appropriate packets to these devices to make them respond with their names. Thanks to this, the Lanalyzer I have a timeshare in has a much more complete namefile than it would if I had had to try and figure out the namefile manually. Alas you still have to punch in the DOS PCs and the UNIX systems manually but I dare say they'll figure something out. Anybody have any suggestions for how to get UNIX systems to respond with their names, by firing a single or even a couple of packets at them? I'd be interesting in hearing any solutions for anyones machines. I'll forward any suggestions to the right people here..... Keith - Keith Brown Phone: (408) 473 8308 Novell San Jose Development Centre Fax: (408) 433 0775 2180 Fortune Dr, San Jose, California 95131 Net: keith@novell.COM