Network Node Manager, or NNM, has been around the longest of all the network management applications and has shared its code with Tivoli's NetView and Bull's ESM.

NNM covers all the bases, including inventory, exception and performance with a new Web-based GUI. In addition, HP has added menu options and tools to make management easier.

NNM's GUI is pretty much read-only, with the exception of report scheduling. Although NNM lacks some of the right clicks that Peregrine has implemented, it is in sync with traditional Win32 or Unix GUIs. One of the Java applets pegged my workstation CPU at 100 percent, requiring Task Manager intervention.

HP has done well by NNM in packing information into the Java client -- from alarms to maps to reports, it has quite a few functions. When it comes to displaying inventory and general navigating of the network database, we found we especially like the Microsoft Internet Explorer paradigm the product uses.

While NNM claims to use bridge and repeater MIBs, we didn't see evidence of this. We did, however, see some devices connected to one another at Layer 2, but, for the most part, the product maps at Layer 3. In addition, our Cisco 6509 was shown to have a Cisco OID (object identifier), but the vendor was left unset. While we could forgive this oversight because the 6509 is a new device, we had the same problem with the ancient 2501. HP does a good job of specifying the configuration files that need to be updated to add devices, but in the case of the 2501, it was already defined. The device may have timed out during discovery (why, we don't know; none of the other products had this problem). In any case, we had to spend time searching through the docs and config files, and we finally ended up redoing the discovery.

Another diagnostic performance feature that NNM shares with NetView is that not only does it collect MIB data, but it also applies predefined MIB expressions. This long list includes percentage of utilization and errors, total packets in out and errors, retransmits, Cisco memory utilization, and percentage of full-duplex utilization.

The product also offers excellent documentation, so not only did we know from whence the statistics arose, but we were able to create our own expressions too.

Performance data is now deliverable via e-mail reports, with HTML links pointing to the devices. Report generation is easy: In a matter of a few minutes we generated daily reports on general availability, Cisco routers, top talkers and inventory. These reports are a first attempt by HP to create useful performance reports. The format is very much like the simple real-time graphs that NNM has always had, but the information is more useful and light enough in its Web delivery to be useful when on the road. There isn't any forward-looking aspect to the reports. In other words, they don't try to predict the future, but they do show trends for the last day. We kept a finger on the pulse of network performance even when on the road. Each report was delivered via e-mail as an overview, with URL link drill-downs on specific interfaces.

OpenView Network Node Manager 6.1. Available: Now. Hewlett-Packard Co., (800) 752-0900; (650) 857-1501; fax (650) 857-5518. www.hp.com