Achieve Complete Visibility

Observer exists to help you better know, optimize, and repair your complex network. To do so requires complete visibility into your network and the devices residing on it. Observer Standard delivers just that: full network visibility.

From LAN testing to complex operations across geographic locations, Observer Standard addresses your unique need by supporting multiple topologies.

Observer Standard also fully supports IPv6 and views and analyzes virtual machines exactly as it would any other device.

From real-time packet capture and decode to long-term reports and trending, Observer offers the flexibility to address issues from multiple angles, and to provide different organizational levels the types of information they need.

Stay Alert with Proactive Notification

Ensuring network problems have the least possible business impact means knowing instantly when problems arise. Observer's customizable Triggers and Alarms let you choose when and how to receive important alerts.

Understand network demands and set baselines, employ Triggers and Alarms to set thresholds and receive notification when they're crossed. Choose from alert options, including e-mail, pager, or trouble ticket, or start a packet capture.

Other Triggers and Alarms Features:

• Flag activities or errors from a pre-defined list
• Set custom notifications based on any filter
• Obtain e-mail with virus information including source and destination
• Trigger on any WLAN activity

View Triggers and Alarms video.

Analyze Network Data Over Time

Understanding the ordinary, day-to-day variations in your network is critical to getting value from your network and delivering maximum uptime. Observer offers an array of trending and reporting utilities for baselining, running projections, and more.

Observer lets you view data by individual time increment or compare statistics among designated periods. We've included a host of pre-loaded reports for quick and easy use, but we also allow you to tailor reports to customize your experience.

Custom Report Features:

• Choose text-based, graphical, or web-based reports
• Design custom reports and save templates for later use
• Auto-generate reports to any folder or e-mail box
• Share reports with non-Observer users

Add Observer Reporting Server for enterprise-wide reporting with deep drill-down.

View Data in Real Time

Time is of the essence when network problems threaten your ability to conduct business. Network Instruments knows this and includes a range of real-time awareness tools with every copy of Observer.

Gauge performance with over 30 real-time statistics including Top Talkers, which lets you identify network bandwidth hogs. Observer lets you find broadcast storms, detect faulty network hardware, view LAN use patterns, and review switch usage. Also view stats on bandwidth utilization, access point load, and protocol distribution.

Observer Standard tracks, monitors, and analyzes VLAN data. View data independently or in aggregate, monitor real-time statistics by VLAN, or determine loads by station and by VLAN.

Perform In-Depth Troubleshooting

Observer's packet capture, decode, and filtering capabilities are second to none. Observer lets you view individual packets and decode over 590 primary protocols and countless subprotocols.

See full decode listing.

Observer filters packets quickly and efficiently by address, address range, protocol offsets, and protocol presets. Use Boolean logic to create complex filters.

Observer Standard also lets you filter with regular expressions, design filters visually, and execute multiple filters concurrently. Best of all, you can share filter libraries with other Observer users.

 

More Great Features

Multi-Hop Analysis
Easily tackle multi-segment/multi-tier visibility issues. Observer Expert lets you compare data from multiple perspectives—pre and post load balancer, for example—to pinpoint and solve congestion, fragmentation, delay, intermittent connectivity, and packet loss issues.

MPLS Analysis
Manage MPLS migrations with the Observer Expert network analyzer. View a detailed breakdown of your MPLS network to pinpoint problems and measure performance.

Time Interval Analysis
View conversations in user-defined time intervals. View stats like response time and retransmissions graphically. Quickly scan connections for response time spikes to zero in on problems.

Stream Reconstruction
Capture traffic and recreate communications. Rebuild web pages (including images), and reconstruct e-mails, VoIP calls, documents, and IMs. Help maintain corporate Internet usage policies, assist law enforcement, and contribute toward Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Plus NetFlow integration, wireless Experts, and the industry's largest memory buffer.