Clean-n-Easy Network Troubleshooting and Remediation

Do you, like most network administrators, feel that today’s network-management products are far too complicated, expensive, and fragmented for your environment? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reasonably priced solution that gave you confidence in your ability to troubleshoot, diagnose, and solve problems related to bandwidth, traffic, applications and the IT infrastructure? PacketTrap Networks might have the solution for you.

The company recently announced the availability of PacketTrap Perspective, a network troubleshooting and remediation solution developed for single-site and multiple-site networks. The product’s central management console simplifies laborious, highly manual, time-consuming network-management tasks such as application monitoring, traffic troubleshooting, router configuration, and log-file management.

In network-management products, administrators are yearning for multi-function integration, effective visual dashboards, ease of use, and ease of deployment. The folks at PacketTrap aim to provide these capabilities, then go further by adding advanced features—such as baselining, simulations, and smart policies—that historically have been available only as part of high-end platform suites.

When I spoke recently with PacketTrap, Anna Yen—VP of marketing and corporate development—said, “Network management is an IT manager pain point, especially as the industry is being forced to evolve given such developments as voice implementation and virtualization. Existing tools are archaic and require a lot of time to customize. Also, available tools focused on the high end or the very low end. We wanted to address the middle of the market.”

Earning special mention is the product’s usability and extremely clean interface. “We wanted to provide a great, intuitive interface. We wanted a consistent look and feel, and a thorough implementation of Web 2.0 technology. We have an established user base of more than 10,000 network administrators who provided critical input regarding features, functions, and usability. The end product is something that can be implemented, configured, and customized in 15 minutes.”

But probably the biggest selling point is that the product's usability exposes a great deal of functionality unique to this price point. Yen said, "Most high-end products are just too complicated. We're bringing those great features into an easy-to-use interface so that you can actually use them. It makes no sense to bring baselining to mid-market customers if they don't know how to use it."

Pricing is determined by the number of interfaces (any physical, serial, or virtual interface on a device). Prices range from $1,995 for 100 interfaces to $16,795 for unlimited interfaces. This price includes application monitoring and one year of support and software maintenance