USING SKYLINE, YOU CAN FIND OUT what's going on with your network without having to become a protocol expert. This network-management package not only scans your network but analyzes it for you as well.
Protocol Primer. Skyline analyzes and displays bar graphs of network data collected by its bundled companion product, Satellite. The graphs are easy to manipulate -- most of the operations require only pointing and clicking. Skyline can tell you which protocols are running and how much network bandwidth each one is taking up, which is helpful for troubleshooting tasks such as checking on network overloads and setting limits on usage. Skyline identifies over 850 LAN and WAN protocols, including the AppleTalk, NetBIOS, DECnet, TCP/IP, and NetWare protocols (including IPX and NCP).
You can use Skyline's reports to analyze the normal traffic on your network and find deviations from the norm. You can even use Skyline to figure out the amount of bandwidth used by network-management tools, including Skyline itself. Other reports give you the traffic by each node, including routers, or by protocol.
Information Courier. Satellite has alarms that notify you if network conditions exceed limits you've set. An alarm can set off a sound, send you a message on your computer, or call your pager.
You can have multiple copies of Satellite running on different network segments. A single copy of Satellite can connect to other copies of Satellite running across routers and even on networks in different locations via ARA connections.
Skyline requires its own Ethernet port, so if Satellite is on the same machine as Skyline, you can get away with only one Ethernet port but you won't be able to run any network applications, such as file sharing. If you have Skyline and Satellite on separate Macs, you'll need two Ethernet ports on the Mac with Satellite -- one for Satellite and one for AppleTalk, which Skyline uses to communicate with Satellite.
We tested Skyline running on both a Power Mac and a 680x0 Mac, on networks of different sizes. The only problem we ran into was when we tried to run Skyline and Satellite together on a machine with 8 MB of RAM. Skyline doesn't handle low-memory situations elegantly and crashed several times after it displayed low-memory error messages. However, we give Skyline high marks because it makes it easy to get useful information about your network -- even if you're not terribly technical.
Skyline/Satellite 1.1 (4 out of 5 mice) Very Good / Price: Skyline console and one copy of Satellite, $795 (list). Company: The AG Group, Walnut Creek, CA; 800-466-2447 or 510-937-7900. Reader Service: Circle #416.
