Observer’s VoIP Expert is designed to help manage, troubleshoot, and maintain VoIP traffic across your network.

• Convenient and comprehensive at-a-glance summaries
• VoIP Traffic Summary
• Call Summary
• Voice Quality Scoring
• Precedence (QoS)
• Summary Graphs
  
  
• Detailed views with in-depth Call Detail Records
• Addresses
• Status (Open, closed, setup, teardown)
• Number of packets, packet bytes, packet loss
• Start time, initial setup duration, duration
• Current jitter, maximum jitter
• MOS, R-factor
• QoS for each call
• Number of packets that arrive out of order
• Detailed analysis for packet loss and delay
• Gap density, average gap duration

Observer's VoIP Expert now supports Avaya® and Mitel® systems.

more info on Observer's VoIP features

Observer 11 and the GigaStor unveil a new paradigm in network troubleshooting. For example, time-based troubleshooting and mining through enormous amounts of data is now easier than ever. Observer 11 integrates a new timeline interface for the GigaStor, which manages, displays, and analyzes capture histories as large as 8 TBs.

The GigaStor is ideal for transaction-heavy organizations, dealing with data retention compliance (such as for Sarbanes-Oxley), network forensics, and troubleshooting sporadic and elusive network issues.

Observer 11 coupled with the GigaStor delivers significant enhancements:

• Navigate through massive amounts of data with ease
• Manages all data processing and Expert Analysis locally at the GigaStor
• Store up to 8 TB of data
• Capture wire-speed traffic continuously
• View conversations and transactions by time or with filters
• Obtain Expert analysis in real time and post capture
• Instantly create and save filters
• Select and auto-filter on individual statistics to quickly isolate issues
• MAC Stations
• IP Stations
• IP Pairs
• TCP Ports
• UDP Ports
• VLANs
• Physical Ports

Available in Expert Observer or Observer Suite and the GigaStor. For more information, go to the GigaStor Product Page.

NetFlow monitors routed traffic on the backplane of Cisco switches and routers. Any Advanced Expert Probe can be configured to aggregate flows from various NetFlow devices on the network and send updated information to an Observer console. The console then displays the NetFlow data, providing top talkers, pairs matrix, bandwidth usage, long-term trending, VLAN analysis, and application awareness.

IT can gain a number of benefits by integrating NetFlow technology in an Observer environment.

• Collect statistics on user activity
• Extend Observer probe visibility
• Obtain long-term trending reports
• Consolidate and encrypt user data collected by NetFlow technology

NetFlow analysis has been integrated into Expert Observer and Observer Suite. More information on NetFlow can be found on the flow technologies page.

Network administrators can now obtain comprehensive visibility into their storage area networks (SAN) that run over Fibre Channel links with Network Instruments’ new line of internally designed hardware appliances.

Network Instruments® has leveraged its Gen2™ capture technology to deliver a complete Fibre Channel analysis solution, seamlessly integrating SAN analysis with all the other types of analysis that Observer delivers—all with a consistent user experience.

Network Instruments’ Fibre Channel systems allow you to:

• Decode Fibre Channel protocols
• Monitor over 30 Fibre Channel statistics
• Track application performance
• Set alarms to proactively identify potential problems
• Receive Expert problem identification on 20 SAN-specific issues
• Review aggregate summaries of overall SAN health
• Perform long-term trending and reporting
• Drill down and isolate specific conversations or transactions

Fibre Channel Support has been integrated into Expert Observer and Observer Suite.

Stream Reconstruction
For enterprise administrators concerned with network forensics, compliance, and security, Observer can now take captured traffic and recreate the communication in an easy-to-read format.

• Rebuild web pages (including images)
• Reconstruct e-mails and instant messaging communication
• Replay VoIP calls

This hard evidence on network activity can help maintain corporate Internet usage policies, assist law enforcement, and contribute toward Sarbanes-Oxley compliance (SOX).

Available in Expert Observer and Observer Suite.

Track conversations and transactions through up to 10 segments, hops, and routes with Observer’s new MultiHop Analysis. This offers network administrators a way to quickly pinpoint and eliminate delay happening at any point during transactions. Observer tracks conversations for up to 10 hops, so you can easily see across routes or segments. MultiHop Analysis is ideal for pinpointing bottlenecks within specific conversations across multiple links or to verify if third party service providers are performing to their Service Level Agreement.

Use MultiHop Analysis on individual network conversations to:

• Determine if slowdowns are caused by network delay or system processes
• Identify packet loss and location
• Measure one-way delay, round-trip delay, and individual hop delay

MultiHop Analysis offers individual displays including:

• Connection Dynamics – shows delay packet-by-packet, hop-by-hop
• Hop Summary – shows delay from selected conversations in aggregate, providing average delay from multiple conversations over time and average time lost due to drops
• Summary Statistics – provides a textual summary display of selected conversations

MultiHop Analysis is applicable to WAN links, Ethernet connections, wireless traffic, and gigabit networks.

Available in Expert Observer and Observer Suite.

Observer is the first enterprise-driven, multi-topology, distributed network analyzer with a 64-bit core for maximizing 64-bit analysis. A 32-bit version is also included. Now, whether your platform is 32-bit, 64-bit, or a combination, Observer greatly improves analysis performance providing the fastest, most accurate, and most efficient analysis available. For example, with 32-bit Windows, Observer offers the industry-leading capture buffer, a maximum of 4 GB. With 64-bit, your memory buffer is only limited by the operating system - with the potential for a capture buffer of up to 124 GB. 64-bit also delivers significant enhancements for the Network Instruments' Gen2 Gigabit Capture card. For example, the Gen2 card can now offer double the port density. With multiple port options on the card, you can now use ports individually for monitoring SPAN sessions, combine ports for full-duplex capture, or combine full-duplex ports for trunked applications or any combination of these setups.

32-bit and 64-bit is included with Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite and every Network Instruments Probe Appliance equipped with the Gen2 Capture Card.

With Observer 11, you will find new decodes for Citrix. With Citrix decodes, it is easy for Observer users to monitor Citrix-served applications. Numerous other decodes and decode enhancements are also included.

In addition, Observer’s Application Analysis now supports Citrix, providing up-to-the-nanosecond reports on application performance and session-by-session breakdown of communication flows. Tracking Citrix applications empowers network professionals to track response times and troubleshoot beyond the TCP layer for true application analysis.

New decodes for Citrix are available in Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite.

sFlow is a standard traffic reporting mechanism that device manufacturers have embedded into switches. sFlow monitors sampled traffic on the backplane of these switches and then pushes the data to any Network Instruments Advanced Expert Probe. Similar to how Observer integrates NetFlow, Observer then provides real-time statistics and long-term trending reports on this data as well.

sFlow analysis has been integrated into Expert Observer and Observer Suite.