NetView doesn't include IPX discovery and doesn't offer any workaround for IPX-only networks. Nevertheless, it does a good job identifying Novell servers. If you run IP on your Novell servers, as we do, you won't miss the lack of IPX discovery.

Throughout our experience with NetView, we appreciated the convenience, integration and intuitive nature of its tools. For example, Event Browser--which offered, right off the toolbar, a pull-down list of predefined filters for status, configuration, application, trap, error and threshold, to name a few--gave us quick insight into the overwhelming number of events that pounded out of our 6,000-plus node network. In addition, the Custom Filter tool let us create any conceivable filter, which, when saved, appeared thereafter on the pull-down filter list for future use.

With NetView's trap configuration tool, we automated, defined and modified reaction to enterprise traps. Trap automation was straightforward, thanks to excellent on-screen documentation. However, Tivoli doesn't allow for the complexity of multinode, multistatus correlation as does CA's Unicenter TNG.

Other handy predefined tools tracked event traffic and graphed results by the hour, over the previous 12 hours, according to minimum/maximum/average levels and by current traffic status. One utility also listed nodes in sequence by number of events, generating a quick way to identify problem nodes.

Perhaps the most powerfully demonstrated characteristic of NetView was the speed at which it processed events. Even when we generated hundreds of events, the server and console took the load in stride, especially compared to the other products tested, all running on identical hardware, when the same loads prompted spongy response.

The tight integration of the Event Browser within the topological map was excellent. We were able to see the detail of an event, ping the node and even jump to the node on the map with just a right click of the mouse. This attention to detail, as well as thoughtful reuse of screens and information, is common throughout NetView, making it easy to use.

Heavyweight Statistics Network management applications have never had any trending applications, so we were surprised to find one in NetView. We also were happy to find it offers powerful data collection, online statistics and a graphing tool.

NetView's Summary Report is an online trending tool that displays average, minimum, maximum, last and current statistics for Top Talkers, IP Retransmits, Name Server Speed, and Numbers of Nodes, Networks, Segments and Interfaces, to name a few. In addition to providing this general network information, the tool let us monitor specific nodes for packet timing, bandwidth utilization and connectivity. This was helpful, but it would have been nice to run the collections as started tasks or NT services.

The Summary really isn't a baselining tool. Its baseline statistics are just a snapshot of current statistics. No attempt was made to suggest or automate the setting of thresholds, or predict a future point at which set thresholds would be crossed. This tool, while unequaled by any tool in the other products we tested, is a good, but manual, first attempt at trending data.

In contrast, historical data collection and online display are excellent in NetView, and couldn't be matched in the other products we tested. The collection is intuitive and easy to modify. We were happy to see that at least one of the platforms had finally got these fairly straightforward tasks right.