There are several key components used by successful IT and networking organizations: People Processes Tools People are the most important assets, followed by proper processes, then the tools to implement and automate those processes. Great people, with the right processes, can overcome the lack of tools...

TTCP (Test TCP, see www.netcordia.com/resources/tools.asp ) gets a large number of hits on our web site. It is a free throughput testing program that has been used for many years. I obtained it from someone at Excelan, a network interface card vendor, while working at the US Naval Academy in the mid...

VoIP troubleshooting is a pretty interesting problem. (See my earlier blog entry regarding my talk at VoiceCon Fall 2007.) There are a large number of tools that look at packets on the wire, or look at the RTCP (Real Time Control Protocol) stream from certain phones, or gather data from the call controllers...

I visited a customer yesterday who is using eight (!) tools for network management (this count includes NetMRI ). It wasn’t much of a surprise to find out that they are using only a fraction of each product, often only one specific function. One product was used for displaying a map with red/green...