Daily Network Monitor

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.

Network Monitoring comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be as complex as a multi-site WAN distributed solution. Or, it could be as simple as reacting to end-users phone calls claiming that they can’t receive email.

But a common theme across the Network Monitoring spectrum is that in all cases, network downtime can cost companies. This number could run up to fifty thousand dollars an hour or more with the mix of lost productivity and revenue.

Here are five things to think about when looking at Monitoring solutions.

1. Discover: Intelligently discover your network devices.
2. Map: Elegantly build a visual topographical map of your network.
3. Monitor: Look at specific services, critical applications and assure availability.
4. Alerting: Let’s you know when you have a problem on your network?
5. Reporting: With all of the data that is being collected, present it in a legible format.

Thank you all for the comments on Fixed vs. Fluid Layouts and Browser size. I agree that for a business web site, where the content doesn’t change a thousand times a day, a site with fixed width is easier to manage. Yet, there is something very cool about using fluid positioning on certain elements. I have a friend that works for a museum, and their web site uses some cool and very easy to implement Fluid Positioning: www.pem.org/homepage.

Years ago I built a web site for a specific SEO project - more on this later - for Ziff Davis Media. I relied heavily on the following web site, www.bluerobot.com, which has a lot of great examples on how to implement CSS in many web site scenarios. What’s great is that this site provides the code for you! This was my go to site when I was learning CSS positioning!

OK, the SEO project mentioned above included creating absolute positioned div tags in a relative positioned div wrapper. The point of this project was to get the most important search engine friendly content at the top of the HTML code page, while the content that you see in the browser is positioned somewhere in the middle of the page. Essentially, we wanted to “trick” search engines.

We contemplated doing the same thing for www.whatsupgold.com, but I’ve talked to at least one SEO expert that suggested this type of practice yields little to no advantage to all the trouble that it’s worth.

Comments by web developers and SEO gurus would be greatly appreciated, and look for the new site on May 6th.