Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery – Pulse or data error handling – Transmission facility testing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-19
2002-05-28
Ray, Gopal C. (Department: 2181)
Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery
Pulse or data error handling
Transmission facility testing
C709S224000, C710S105000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06397359
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention, generally, relates to network communication methods, systems and computer program products and, more particularly, to systems, methods and computer program products for performance testing of computer networks.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Companies are often dependent on mission-critical network applications to stay productive and competitive. To achieve this, information technology (IT) organizations preferably provide reliable application performance on a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week basis. In this demanding environment, frequent network expansion and day-to-day fire fighting often leave little time for IT managers to manage network performance proactively. Accordingly, IT managers typically rely on some form of system management and/or network management tools to help automate performance management tasks to increase the efficiency of the IT staffs. Even with these tools, IT staffs are typically required to commit resources to integrating and customizing the tools to work in the heterogeneous network environments which may include, for example, hardware from a variety of vendors, executing a variety of operating systems and communication protocols and supporting a variety of application programs for different end user requirements.
Various known system management products track specific information, such as the CPU utilization on a server, server paging and disk access activity, or client application response time. This information may be useful when solving problems on a network. These products can generally be categorized as passive system and application monitors. This category typically is implemented as software agent technologies that reside on the client or server computers. They generally passively monitor live application transactions and monitor resource utilization. Products in this category include Patrol from BMC Software, Inc., FirstSense Agent from FirstSense Software, Inc., S3 from NextPoint Networks, Inc., VitalSuite from INS, Luminate Software Corp., and Envive Corp. As they are passive application monitors, they typically support only specific application programs. For example, Luminate Software and Envive support the SAP R/3 application, NextPoint Networks and BMC Software support the Oracle database. Their measurements are neither consistent nor repeatable, as a user's interaction with a given application varies over time. moreover, they are typically not suited to detecting system slowdowns or failures from the perspective of an end user.
Another category of of system management tool is active application monitors. These are products that generally measure performance by actively emulating application transactions. These transactions are often referred to as “synthetic” transactions. Products in this category include VeriServ from Response Networks, Inc. and SLM from Jyra Research Inc. VeriServ allows an operator to define the types of applications to be monitored, times and days, and the end user locations from which the transactions are to originate. The operator may also choose to define alarm thresholds. Agents installed at the end user location monitor actual sample application transactions to measure performance of the applications operating over the network environment. VeriServ automatically tests applications at a fixed interval. SLM provides the flexibility for the user to schedule synthetic transactions for any interval from 5 minutes to a year. However, as these approaches are also typically directed to a particular application and require that the applications be installed and operating to generate network traffic, they generally only address simple web and database transactions. Also, any new or custom applications may require extensive configuration by the users to allow the tester to interact with the applications.
Another approach to passive monitoring is directed to the network rather than the overall system. On the network side, element managers or passive network monitors are known which may address a specific segment or device on the network. Element managers are generally software designed to manage specific groups of devices, such as routers and switches. Passive network monitors are typically a combination of hardware and software that may, for example, monitor network traffic at the link layer or at the infrastructure devices. Products falling in this category include remote monitor (RMON) probes from NetScout Systems, Inc., Sniffer from Network Associates, NetMetrix from Hewlett-Packard, Application Expert from Optimal Networks Corp., EcoSCOPE from Compuware Corp., and Visual OnRamp from Visual Networks, Inc. These network management tools typically provide information such as packet loss, bit rates, and network utilization. This type of information may be helpful in fixing a network problem after the problem has been identified. However, as with the passive system monitors, these tools generally do not reflect network performance as experienced by a user. These tools are passive, in that they generally watch the network traffic which traverses a network segment or link, rather than actively creating traffic.
Passive network monitors sometimes include a basic scheduler to collect sample data from their data sources. A basic scheduler generally merely specifies the frequency (e.g., once every 15 minutes) at which the management console of the monitor should collect data from the data sources. Passive monitors are limited in that they are typically expensive to scale, only see traffic that is on the network at the time and do not recognize new or custom application traffic. Furthermore, it is difficult, if not impossible, to get a total end-to-end view of network performance from the sum of the individual elements as observed by passive monitors.
All of these approaches are limited in their ability to track network performance on a continuing basis in a manner which will reflect that performance from an end user perspective across a variety of hardware, operating systems and end user specific application programs while supporting multiple network protocols under actual operating conditions. This creates particular problems as networks are typically not static as new hardware and software application programs may be periodically added thereby changing the traffic characteristics on the network and the end user's experience of network performance. This changing environment also makes it difficult if not impossible for any of these known tools to provide repeatable measurements over time for use in assessing changes in network performance while improving the efficiency of IT staffs rather than increasing their workload. It is increasingly important to analyze the actual performance of the network to be tested without the constraints and limitations of these existing tools. It would also be beneficial to provide for automated evaluation of the acceptability of monitored performance of the network.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide network performance testing methods, systems and computer program products which can provide network managers the ability to test the performance of a network in an ongoing manner.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such network performance methods, systems and computer program products which can have flexibility in how and when network performance testing is executed.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such network performance methods, systems and computer program products which can determine if performance is acceptable.
These and other objects are provided by systems, methods and computer program products which test network performance by defining test schedules including test protocols to be implemented and when the protocols should be executed for a plurality of defined connections on a network. A connection may be defined between two endpoint nodes on the network. At times specified in the test schedule, the endpoint node pair executes the test prot
Chandra Vikas
McCorry Mark Eric
Quan David Vi Hien
Schwaller Peter James
Selvaggi Christopher David
Myers Bigel Sibley & Sajovec P.A.
NetIQ Corporation
Ray Gopal C.
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