Daily Network Monitor

By Erin Hayes

Who Do You Browse With?

I wrote a blog nearly a year ago expressing my mistrust in Google Chrome and asserting my position that when Chrome became available for Mac (my preferred computer) I would not be jumping on that bandwagon.

Well, what a difference nearly a year makes. I did stay somewhat true to my word and I was not the first, the second, or even the thousandth to jump on the Mac compatible Chrome bandwagon last spring. But jump, I eventually did.

The bugs I encountered a year ago; the incompatibility with Google’s own commodities such as YouTube and Gmail, had been worked out. The browser offered a variety of sleek new skins with which I could customize it and the load time for my favorite sites saw a noticeable, albeit not huge, improvement from Firefox.

And according to the numbers released by W3School’s Browser Statistics Month by Month last week, I wasn’t the only internet user to take notice of Chrome’s advancements: Chrome was used for 10.8% of visits to W3School site in January 2010. A solid 3^rd place after Mozilla Firefox (46.3%) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (36.2%). 

Out of curiosity I used Google Analytics to get an idea of how the browser war was playing out with the visitors of WhatsUp Gold’s external blog www.dailynetworkmonitor.com.

 

Sure enough, there was a marked upswing in visitors using Chrome to come to our blog in January as well. Our stats for January were about the same as W3School’s showing. Chrome rang in at 10% whereas Firefox held 33% of the use and Internet Explorer 51%.

But what was more interesting to me – and more impressive proof of this market trend – was the jump in Chrome use between November and December. In November Chrome barely showed up in our analytics. It was used for .03% of the visits, just coming in under Safari’s .035% share. Firefox counted for 22% while Internet Explorer dominated at an impressive 69%.

But December brought a noticeable shift; Chrome suddenly jumped to 7% of the use while Safari stayed around the same. Firefox stayed around the same overall percentage where Internet Explorer saw a drop off to 54%.

It’s my opinion that Chrome’s market increase is largely due to frustration with Internet Explorer. Security issues aren’t anything new with the browser, but renewed concern over it’s security led the French and German governments to advise people to switch browsers last month.

While IE still dominates the browser space, its market share has seen a steady decline; from 68.5% last March to 62.12% in January. Firefox hasn’t seen too much change in their market share over the last year; Mozilla’s browser suffered a one percent drop from their 23.30% in March mid year but caught back up to 24.43% last month. Chrome, however, held 1.62% in March 2009 and can now claim 5.22%. Google’s browser owes most of its jump to OS X users who did not have access to it until last spring.

I’d like to see Google Chrome’s market share continue to grow and challenge Microsoft to create a more user and security friendly Internet Explorer. While in corporate terms the Internet giant and computing czar are on a level playing field, Google’s Internet browser has a ways to go to catch up to Microsoft’s institution.

Google’s scrappy little browser could be the motivation Microsoft needs to create a level browser one should be able to expect from a company with resources like Microsoft.

It’s my opinion that the best thing to happen to any big company is a little competition. It keeps them from getting away with laziness and keeps prices and expectations in the market fair.

But then again . . . my opinion on the matter may be a little biased.

Popularity: 40% [?]

By Peter Christensen

There has been a lot of buzz around WAN optimization over the past few months, with numerous mentions of what WAN optimization is and what it brings to the table. On the surface, it is certainly a cool technology, but it is a technology that requires some additional thought before implementing. It is certainly another great tool in the network managers arsenal.

WAN optimization should be considered as another component of an overall network management strategy. Why do I say this? Well there are several reasons, first of all, WAN optimization only provides a capability for a small subset of the network, WAN links. Certainly organizations want to use their bandwidth more efficiently and cost effectively, but if the links were not properly engineered and provisioned in the first place, WAN optimization will not help.

If anything, WAN optimization actually builds the case for more effective management of local networks connected by WAN links. Since WAN optimization only looks between edge routers, a more complete and consolidated end-to-end perspective is required and network management and monitoring provides that holistic view. No only does a network manager need to look at device status, but also the infrastructure as a whole; including devices, applications, and bandwidth. Network management and monitoring is the elemental solution that brings it all together in one place. For those organizations that are thinking about implementing WAN optimization, be sure that you have an overall network management and monitoring strategy or even better, a solution in place to get the whole picture and not just pieces of it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Peter Christensen

Ipswitch has been working hard on a new release of their network monitoring software and it is finally here. So without any further delay, let me highlight a few of the 20 new features of Whats Up Gold v12.0 that bring 360^o visibility, actionable intelligence and complete control to network managers.

• Split Second Graphs – bring real-time information to network managers with 13 new reports that can be configured and added to any of the Top 10 or full reports. With Split Seconds Graphs network managers can simply enable Split Second Graphs on any monitor and can now have up-to-the-second data to quickly pinpoint an issue.
• InstantInfo – presents instantaneous access to utilization data on a highlighted interface. InstantInfo is enabled in WhatsUp Gold by default. Data is presented to the network manager by simply hovering the cursor over the enabled interface description. This is especially valuable when trying to locate intermittent issues without having to access reports. Similar to SSG embedded in reports, the data is transient and is not stored in the WhatsUp Gold database.
• New SNMP MIB Tools: MIB Explorer, MIB Manager and MIB Walker – MIB Explorer simplifies the chore of identifying and figuring out what MIB variables are available to be monitored directly on the device. MIB Manager enables drag and drop addition and validation of MIBs, all before you enable a monitor and then find out that the MIB is incorrect. And finally, with MIB Walker directly view the variables in a MIB to understand what parameters the MIB contains.
• Upgraded WhatsUp SQL database and Vista Support.

As a limited time offer, try WhatsUp Gold and you’ll be entered to win a Nintendo® Wii Fit & Wii Game System Console ($550 Value).

Also, if you haven’t already, please take the time to visit www.whatsupgold.com and download a v12.0 product demo. While you’re there you might notice that the site is completely new, providing in-depth information about the whole WhatsUp  product family and associated technologies.

Popularity: 1% [?]