Launched in Early September, Neon Software's CyberGauge 7 is a monitoring, reporting and planning tool for bandwidth utilisation for network interfaces and works with any Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-enabled device. To monitor five devices the price is £259 + VAT and an upgrade from the previous version, 6.5, costs £59 + VAT.

The main new feature is support for SNMP versions 2 and 3. The version 3 support allows two-way authentication and encryption, enabling it to be used with more sensitive networks. Another useful new feature is CyberGauge's ability to create bandwidth utilisation graphs and export the data gleaned as a .jpg file, along with the ability to timestamp it and even send it to an FTP subfolder. The data can also be exported as an Excel .xls file, allowing bandwidth trending or detailed statistical analysis for bandwidth planning. Both .jpg and .xls files can be used to provide web-based reports.

In our tests, we found setup was easy and five minutes after installing the system we were able to monitor traffic flows through our SNMP-enabled switches, routers or appliances. Unfortunately CyberGauge only works with SNMP-enabled devices, and so cannot be used with some of the less expensive wireless routers and devices which do not use SNMP.

Our Be wireless router, a Thomson SpeedTouch 716g model, was not SNMP-enabled. However, we connected it through a 3Com 4250T 48-port 10/100Mbits Layer 3 switch and then connected devices through this to check bandwidth utilisation through each port. We were able to configure alerts for gigabit uplinks, RS232 console ports, Ethernet management ports, and any defined virtual LANs (VLANs).

We could also monitor local bandwidth utilisation of devices through our HP ProCurve 4108gl gigabit switch. System administrators assigning virtual machine traffic to specific ports or to specific VLANs could also monitor bandwidth designated for that purpose.

It was also easy to define where alerts should be sent, either emailed through defined primary and secondary email servers using SMTP authentication or directly to a defined syslog server. There is also an option to record detailed transcripts of CyberGauge's operation and sub-options about what goes into these log files.

The validity of our alert and email setups was checked by detailed examination of the event log and designated subfolders for .jpg and Excel files. The daily reports showed device and interface type, as well as monitoring interval and number of intervals. The quality-of-service information consisted of uptime, downtime and number of restarts detected on each interface. Bandwidth distribution and billing information was also captured.

Checking bandwidth distribution on all the interfaces enabled us to detect a misconfigured port showing a 10Mbit/s full duplex link when it should have been set at 100Mbit/s. This correlated with an alert in the event log showing the interface falling below a pre-defined 10 percent threshold.