Carlisle Research, Inc.
Network Instruments Observer - Success Story

Carlisle Research, Inc., is a systems engineering company specializing in mid- to high-level technology systems engineering, integration, testing, and technical support.

Headquartered in Van Nuys, California, Carlisle includes the United States Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Royal Danish Air Force on its client list.

The company is made up of approximately 50 engineering professionals and contract employees who specialize in operational requirements definition, software independent verification and validation, and C3 system engineering services.

The Problem
Carlisle Research is a rapidly growing organization, and that can spell trouble for a network. "When a company like ours expands and takes on new clients, our network can get out of hand pretty quickly," says Bruce Forestal, network systems engineer. And Forestal should know: he's responsible for the design, configuration, and management of all of Carlisle's six LANs and two WANs that include a mixed bag of NT, NetWare, UNIX, VMS machines.

"On the NT and PC side, there were limited tools available for monitoring network performance and traffic, and for analyzing network problems," Forestal explains. "And I had the same problem with the UNIX side. There's a command-line tool built in, but I wanted something that would allow me to do long-term statistical analysis on my networks so I could trend where we're going as a company and plan for growth.

"As we roll out new products and services on the network, our bandwidth gets eaten up pretty quickly. I needed something that would let me look at what was happening and analyze the network quickly and easily."

The Solution
Forestal continues, "I looked at a number of products, but everything was far too expensive. Then, when I found Observer, I thought it was too good to be true. Observer offers an awful lot for comparatively little money. I couldn't find another product that offered the same price/performance, so I bought it."

Observer is a network monitor and protocol analyzer for multiple platforms, including Windows, UNIX, NetWare, Apple, and more. "Its features are similar to those of the most expensive products," Forestal says. "I needed some basic functions such as the ability to break packets down and look at the internal information in packet. I also had to be able to measure bandwidth utilization across the network. In addition, I needed to be able to look at error conditions so I could track down errors coming from a specific node. Observer gave me all that. If I didn't have it, I simply couldn't do a good job of monitoring and troubleshooting my networks. Sure, there's a monitoring tool in NT, but unless you buy additional software, you don't get that tool-and even then, its capabilities are limited compared to what Observer does."

Forestal says he finds Observer to be easy to use and understand. "It is so simple to use that most people who have any network experience are going to jump right into this and in a matter of minutes, they'll have figured out how to utilize its functions because it's so well designed," he says. "That actually caught me by surprise. My experience with other analyzers had led me to think that they all require a great deal of reading and study to use. But not Observer.

"For me, one of the product's most useful features is the graphics it uses," he continues. "It uses bargraphs and dials so that even from a distance-and I'm usually across the room rather than sitting in front of my machine-I can see activity and conditions without any confusion. Network Instruments did some really good visual work with this product. It was designed to be used the way I work."

As for other valuable features, Forestal says Observer made quick work of producing a map of one of the LANs. "I used the network mapping feature to quickly generate a network map. Without Observer, I would have had to go to each node to retrieve information. The map that Observer produced was good enough to use in a presentation-and it took very little time to figure out," he says.

Forestal continues, "I'm constantly trying to maximize available bandwidth and minimize the number of protocols the networks use so that they're easier to maintain. Observer has shown me some things I didn't expect-some devices were using a frame type that I didn't want in my network and some older machines were running protocols I didn't realize were there. Once I became aware of those situations, I was able to deal with them pretty easily. But I credit Observer with bringing them to my attention in the first place.

"Observer also helps me keep track of new nodes. For security purposes, I keep a running table of all the active nodes on the system. Subsequently, whenever anything is added-and, of course, end users aren't supposed to add any hardware, but sometimes they do anyway-Observer tracks down the node.

"This tool gives me a very clear and up-to-date picture of the state of my LANs," Forestal says. "It kind of opens the door and allows me to see things I otherwise couldn't have seen. Observer has given me more control over my network."

Contact: Bruce Forestal 818-785-8677