1. How can I.... ?

How can I rate the quality of network connections?

The quality of a network connections depends on various elements on different levels. But if a network is up and running some tools can not be used because they would stop the data flow. One of the measurement methods allowed is simply to use the network and report how good it works. An easy and effective way, the so called echo-test is very useful. This is exactly what NetQuality VoIP  can do on a professional basis.

How I get permanently an up-to-date address list of my network?

The ideal tool to provide this is the AddressWizard. It can scan the IP-address ranges in your network periodically. Additionally it is possible to record addresses which are active in your network but not in your IP-address ranges. The resulting address list with IP- und MAC-addresses, DNS names, NetBios information, time of the first and last occurrence and possibly SNMP information is automatically saved as HTML or XML page and made accessible via a Web server.

Recording of address information may be important from different points of view. For security reasons it is important to know which, when and where foreign addresses appear in your network..

I am an ISP. How can I bill the traffic of my customers?

1. Your switches or routers send NetFlow* records:

You only want to bill the outgoing traffic. A RzKFlow probe receives the data of the NetFlow* compatible router(s) and sends the data to NetControl (with accounting option). RzKFlow and NetControl can run on the same PC.

As NetControl builds a communication matrix (showing the amount of data exchanged between stations) you can distinguish the traffic of your own network and the traffic with the internet.

2. Your switches or routers does not send NetFlow information:

In this case the billing takes place directly in NetControl.. The connection to the Internet should be a single wire. NetControl listens to the traffic on this wire via a non switching hub. All data is scanned and analyzed for billing purposes. Instead of measure at the internet uplink, you can also measure on your backbone (as a shared medium).

Where do I install measurement probes in a larger network structure?

The placement of the probes is, of course, directly dependant on the present network structure. Networks with large collision domains require few probes for the measurement of the complete traffic. Caused by the central structured cabling you will often have the problem of finding a port for the network supervision, which ensures a complete logging of all network activity. With the help of switching hubs, the segmentation is improved until each user has his own segment. A reasonable solution to this problem is a switch, which has a special monitoring-port (often called tap-port). All packets on the switch backplane are copied to this port.

How can I detect foreign stations within my network?

The Address Wizard provides all tools to dynamically generate a list of all active stations on your network. To create an intrusion detection do the following steps: open the AddressWizard and define the address ranges. That means you exclude all addresses apart from those which are assigned to your PCs or your DHCP-servers' range. If you activate the passive scan mode now, the Address Wizard will show up all IP-addresses seen in the connected network segment. If one of them is outside of your defined address ranges it will be marked red.