The Packet Scoop

Are you a IT Network Engineers or Sys Admin that has lots of network magagement tools scattered on your desktop? Ranging from ping tools to subnet calculators to TFTP Servers, my desktop is a cluttered mess of administration tools. They are from lots of smaller do-it-yourself vendors or one-off shareware vendors. Some of these tools are actually pretty neat. I’ve been using open source Angry IP Scanner by AngryZiber for years. AngryZiber is a little shop from Estonia, but the product is effective and it’s free.The other issue with one-off tools is knowing who to trust. It’s a huge issue. I once installed a tool only to realize that it was a Trojan for spyware.

Most of these tools are okay, and most of the download sites at the very least will scan for viruses. Still, that doesn’t mean the tool isn’t really a conduit for something else. Unless you’re willing to run a packet sniffer you’re probably on the trust mobile here. Go to the company’s website, check out the online reviews, checkout the open source forums (if it’s open source) – do your homework, or get a recommendation from another network engineer. If the company has venture capital backing (especially from Silicon Valley), or is well documented in the open source forums, then you’re probably ok. Mostly, though, I’ve always found the viral way to learn about new tools and technology is by far the most effective – even more effective than a review in a blog (except for this one of course) or online periodical.

The largest issue I have with these tools is the support and integration. Typically there are problems with these tools and support is done via email. Often emails are never replied to by these vendors. When the tools work, they are great, when they don’t you might as well uninstall. While support is a minor nuisance most of the time, integration is my big beef. Each vendor has a unique interface and paradigm for the way they logically group, display, and graph data. Sometimes they’re intuitive and sometimes one wonders if they were designed by a pure software engineer who’s never used an IT tool before. That being said, several companies have released toolsets: a collection of their tools bundled into a single install. SolarWinds’ Engineering Toolset is an example of this approach. While each tool may not be very robust and integration between tools is kludgy at best, at the very least you get access to a bunch of tools from one vendor that are bungled together. The tools do what they promise and, by and large, work pretty well.

The down side is that SolarWinds, while doing a great job on the bundling, have delivered some of the poorest interface designs on the market. Further, they continue to advertise over forty tools in their toolset – it seems they think quantity equals value – but many of these tools should be integrated into one larger tool. After all, why should one have launch a TFTP server (tool number one), then connect to a Cisco Router (tool number two), then perform a backup (tool number three)? Shouldn’t it all be in one tool? Seems like a simple idea to me.