Planning for Network Growth

Planning with the Network Performance Advisor

Using Network Tools

Current network analysis tools provide data about network activity in tabular or graphic form that must be laboriously analyzed and interpreted by a knowledgeable system administrator. This approach is time-consuming and does not provide the proactive analysis that allows for future planning. System administrators require tools that analyze data and present it in an easily understood format. The data must help the administrator prioritize the network problems and suggest solutions, as well as allowing him or her to anticipate possible future problems.

Network planning and optimization tools must be accurate and cost-effective. The impact on network usage should be minimal. The tool must collect the correct data efficiently and provide intelligent analysis of the data to the administrator.

Planning with the Network PerformanceAdvisor

One of the major challenges facing network administrators is the increasing amount of traffic on the network. It is important to manage the available bandwidth as efficiently as possible. The HP TopTools Network Performance Advisor is an intuitive, intelligent interpretation tool that provides you with information about the entire network. The Advisor performs automatic traffic analysis and displays the results in easy-to-understand tables and charts. The reports created by the Advisor make useful recommendations on how to improve network performance. The Advisor also provides an inventory report about the end nodes for each segment in the network (excludes hubs, switches and routers). The analysis and data provided by the Advisor assists the system consultant in making a sound business case for changes to the network.

The Network Performance Advisor creates reports that make recommendations about reducing utilization on the network segments to increase network performance. The Advisor provides proactive analysis of a network, in contrast to the real-time, reactive analysis provided by Traffic Monitor.

The Network Performance Advisor makes its recommendations by analyzing the network monitored by HP TopTools. There are two planning reports:

■Reorganize Your Current Equipment Report—suggests ways to improve network performance by rearranging the existing nodes.

■Add or Upgrade Equipment Report—suggests ways to improve perfor- mance by dividing segments or upgrading segments with a switch. It will also tell you if you have any nodes that need to be on a dedicated segment.

Advisor can also include the following information in the reports:

■Show Top Conversations per segment- creates a list of the Top Conver- sations for each segment during the time period selected

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