The Latest Network Testing Software
Ten years ago some people went into the network testing equipment business. They did this by helping to start a company called Network Communications Corporation (NCC). They developed and built the Network Probe.
In the past 10 years they have delivered tens of thousands of Network Probes to customers all over the world. That experience has led me to a number of conclusions about the field of communications networking and testing.
Despite its somewhat boring outward appearance, building network testing equipment is an interesting job. To build effective tools, test equipment manufacturers have to understand networks better than network developers and put that knowledge into our products. To build useful tools we have to understand our users (network installation and maintenance personnel) so that making the tool perform its appointed task does not become an onerous task itself.
Changes in communication networking technologies have necessitated changes in test equipment used on them. The networks of today exhibit a number of startling characteristics and features that make the data communications technology used 10 years ago seem almost primitive. During the last decade, communications architectures have gotten much more varied and complex. Data rates have increased by orders of magnitude. The nature of transported data traffic has radically changed from simple blocks of text and binary data to today's multi-functional mixture of real-time graphics, animation, live video, and voice in addition to the more traditional blocks of relatively static data. The applications generating that traffic have proliferated by leaps and bounds in terms of data composition, frequency, and quantity. The business use of communications networking has increased 10-fold from host-based 3270 cluster controller systems to desktop PCs linked nationally and globally. User-friendly tarrifing of switched 56, T1, fractional T1, and integrated services digital network (ISDN) in the U.S. has made greater bandwidth affordable to the emerging applications. Based on the domestic success and utility of these actions, the rest of the world's PTTs are beginning to adopt similar practices. Transmission equipment and transmission channels have become more reliable and noise immune. Remote monitoring and control systems are finally becoming usable and affordable. Ten years ago network testing and network test equipment were just beginning to emerge as necessities. At that time data communications still came in two colors: Big Blue and everyone else. If you were an IBM shop, then networking equipment compatibility and interoperability were never a problem -- just expensive. Network maintenance and service were equally easy -- and expensive.
Network Testing Software
|