From experience in small enterprise networks, the authors developed a diagnosic system scalable to large networks by analysing joint behavior of two components in the past and estimate the impact of current events.
- existing diagnostic systems: lack detail, require extensive knowledge, sacrifice details
- NetMedic:
- framing detailed dignosis as an inference problem
- estimate when two nodes in the network are impacting each other without knowing how they interact
- captures state of network using many variables
- application unrelated
By anaylizing logs of small enterprises for a month with 450,000 entries, a classification of the problems is established. Component states were captured and dependancy was generated to determine which impacts which. Later it is implemented to large enterprise networks and it works successfully and identifies 80% on their top 10 list.
Comment: I remember a couple years ago, NetMedic was THE hip network diagnosis software like Norton SystemWorks. Are they still popular these days? It's interesting to see they "trained" the software with small ethernet network and implements it on large networks.
I actually wasn't aware that NetMedic was so popular in the past. I would love to learn more about the details surrounding the deployment and what the immediate and long-term results were from it. And, like you said, I would also like to know what diagnostics tool is current in use (whether it's still NetMedic or something else).
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty amazing to think that the small network they tested it with was a good representation of the larger network, and worked so well for it.
Are you sure we are talking about the same thing? This paper described a research prototype. The NetMedic you referred to was a commercial tool, and not from Microsoft. Tools for checking configurations of network equipment are certainly important, but the scope of our NetMedic goes beyond the network equipment.
ReplyDeleteIt's been 10 years since last time I was actually managing the Internet back in high school (oops, does that reveal my age then?) Back then Norton SystemCommander was still THE system/file manager, and everyone uses traceroute and ping in command mode. Maybe it's a different NetMedic?
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