Making Sense Of Network Testing Software
Nature's complexity has repeatedly daunted scientists. Phenomena such as weather are so complex that, as the saying goes, the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China can affect the weather here. Scientists struggle to understand nature because they cannot control it. One product of this struggle has been Chaos Theory.
Network users and managers are now fighting their own battles with complexity. Unfortunately, the product of these battles has been not Chaos Theory, but chaos itself. Testing times for new releases of major network testing softwares are rising rapidly.
Even after extensive testing, bugs abound. IBM, in a quite responsible but nonetheless embarrassing move, had to recall OS/2 Warp. Microsoft had Windows NT 3.5 Server bug fixes ready for downloading almost the day it shipped the product. And Windows 95, already quite late, will have its share of embarrassing bugs when it ships.These products alone are complex, but they're just the start. Complexity rises radically when products interact.
Just a few weeks ago, some problems that were faced during network printing. The culprit turned out to be a Windows video driver, certainly not the first suspect in that bug hunt. Add a new protocol stack to your network, and you're adding complexity. Move to client/server computing, and you're embracing more software layers and, thus, more complexity. You can't avoid it. The very thing that made PCs and PC-based LANs successful --the diversity that sprang from the PC's easily copied architecture and the proliferation of vendors and options that drove prices downward -- is now hurting it. The good news is that, unlike those who study nature, we have the power to take control of our problems. Scientists may not be able to demand that the weather behave, but we can bludgeon vendors into doing so. To stop or slow this growing complexity, we must attack on three fronts: isolation, standardization, and testing. Isolation means moving from monolithic programs to well-defined, simpler pieces that work together. Isolation makes the pieces easier to handle and limits the damage one piece can cause.The key to making isolated pieces work well together is, of course, standards. PC standards have traditionally been loose and unwritten. The IBM AT defined the ISA bus. The first IBM Token-Ring board became the Token-Ring standard. That won't cut it anymore. Finally, we must demand that vendors test their software well with the help of network testing softwares, and then cut them some slack as they spend time on the task. Vendors will have to continue to run long beta tests because they shouldn't rush products to market. As much as we hate Microsoft and IBM for being so slow with new major releases, those time investments may well be essential.
Network Testing Software
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