Conferencing catch-all, NetScout, PictureTel let managers monitor teleconferencing

Thanks to a partnership with PictureTel, network monitoring applications from NetScout Systems Inc. will get to prove their mettle in the Internet videoconferencing environment.

The two companies will develop tools that carriers and their customers can use to monitor audio and videoconferencing traffic using the H.323 standard for videoconferencing over Internet protocol.

NetScout's standards-based tools will let network managers view their distributed applications, including videoconferencing traffic, simultaneously on a single console. The system's monitoring, reporting and analysis solutions will enable customers to evaluate the effect of videoconferencing traffic on their networks and understand how network congestion affects videoconferencing quality.

Because the new tool set will work with any type of isochronous traffic, it will provide a common solution for monitoring all multimedia applications.

Moving into the teleconferencing field and its related pitfalls involving local and wide area network interaction will help NetScout better understand what to focus on as networks develop, said Mike Gayowski, director of marketing at the Chelmsford, Mass.-based company.

The teleconferencing environment - where network congestion, jitter and out-of-sequence packets can render conferencing services useless - leaves less of a margin for error and will help strengthen NetScout's products, Gayowski said. "Network managers who are moving videoconference traffic from private networks onto frame relay and [asynchronous transfer mode] networks have been forced to hope for the best. This will finally give them a good view of what is actually taking place and then let them take action to resolve problems quickly.

"In the past, we couldn't measure IP network activity," said Stephen Price, director of Internet marketing for the Network Systems Division of PictureTel. "That left us with two good motivations for this partnership. First, we want to show customers that problems are the result of network activity and not our systems. Secondly, we want to make sure our customers have a way to resolve those problems when they occur.

In developing the tool set, PictureTel will focus on determining which diagnostic features are mission-critical for its customers, while NetScout will concentrate on product development, including design and coding.

NetScout products with this capability will be released in the fall of 1997, and customers using NetScout's network probes can upgrade their systems by downloading the software.

Using network monitoring techniques normally associated with telecommunications for services such as videoconferencing will become more common as the line between LANs and WANs blurs, one analyst said.