If you're like many network managers now reaping the benefits of full-duplex Fast Ethernet, sooner or later you'll discover that monitoring and troubleshooting these connections carries you into uncharted waters. Shomiti Systems' Voyager probe puts you on course with its standardized RMON2 (Remote Monitoring 2) support and key features, such as two additional 10/100 ports for tapping into traffic with a protocol analyzer.

I tested a beta version of Voyager in our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. The unit was well-equipped for our journey, with up to 256 MB of RAM and eight single-duplex or four full-duplex 10/100 Ethernet connections. Once you have tapped into all the connections you want to monitor, you can gather statistics on the network layer using any management software that adheres to the RMON2 standard.

You can also tap into your traffic with a protocol analyzer for a more detailed look. The Voyager probe provides this capability via two additional 10/100 ports that will support any analyzer with full-duplex capabilities.

I chose to monitor the Fast Ethernet connection between our T3 Internet router and the rest of our campus network. I used RMON2 software from Concord Communications' Network Health and Technically Elite's MeterWare to gather RMON2 statistics. You can also query the probe remotely with Shomiti's Surveyor analyzer software via the vendor's proprietary protocol.

During testing, I used the Traffic Accountant application in the Concord Network Health trending software to gather RMON2 data from the probe and loaded it into Concord's database. I ran Concord's predefined reports to look at statistics such as application usage, top IP talkers and top IP conversations.

To test interoperability further, I used Technically Elite's MeterWare for Windows version 6.0. It had no difficulty identifying all of the ports on the Voyager probe, determined that one of the ports was running at 100 Mbps and adjusted its statistics accordingly. I further used MeterWare to list the probe's protocol directory and found that the Voyager probe monitors about 30 of the common TCP and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocols and supports about a dozen protocols typically found on a Novell network. Voyager does not support the RMON2 feature that lets RMON2 software add TCP and UDP ports to the protocol directory. This is due to the dependence on hardware, says Shomiti.

Shomiti uses custom chips designed for optimized performance with RMON2 and claims that these chips help Voyager achieve performance results at more than 1 million packets per second. Voyager may indeed be a force to be reckoned with.

Peter Morrissey is a network systems programmer at Syracuse University. He can be reached at ppmorris@syr.edu.