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Visual Networks Inc. next week will expand the reach of its Visual Uptime WAN performance management tool with the ability to monitor 15 more application protocols.
Visual Uptime 7.1, which will be launched on Monday, will be able to monitor such WAN traffic as voice over IP via H.323 and Session Initiation Protocol; databases such as Microsoft SQL and Oracle; streaming media such as Real Audio and Windows Media Player; Yahoo, AOL and MSN messenger services; and file sharing such as Napster and Gnutella. Also new is Citrix support as well as the ability for customers to define custom protocols that operate within a port range.
“It gives the enterprise the ability to handle internal applications they want to track or well-known applications that use predefined port ranges,” said a Visual Networks official in Rockville, MD. The new protocol support brings the total number of protocols supported to about 75.
Visual Uptime, which provides WAN performance monitoring over frame relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and private IP networks, also adds in the new release support for faster links.
As more and more enterprises are migrating from frame relay to IP VPNs, they are also looking to boost the speed of the connections into their remote sites from 56Kbps to T-1 speeds, the officials said. That is driving an increase in the speed of the central site connection up to T-3 rates.
“The enterprise needs solutions to look at connectivity problems, track utilization, avoid bottlenecks and plan for growth,” said the official.
To accommodate that requirement, Visual Networks added a High Speed Serial Interface inline probe to Visual Uptime that operates at up to 45Mbps.
Visual Uptime inline probes as well as CSU/DSU devices with integrated probes gather performance data once a day and transmit the data to a central database server for archiving. The data can be used for historical reporting as well as troubleshooting. A Windows-based client provides access to reporting and troubleshooting capabilities. Visual Networks also supports browser-based access to reporting, and it is moving to add full-access to the monitoring tool through a browser.
The new version is due in July.