Background Information
Anacapa Software was founded in June 1995 and is located in Ventura County, California. The mission of the organization is to develop software tools for use on complex internetworks. The first product now in development, will give network users and managers simple easy to understand data about how well the network is serving its users.
Much time and energy has been given to the development of network management tools. Open management platforms, SNMP, RMON are examples of popular and successful implementations of such tools. They are necessary to analyze network traffic especially when trying to locate the source of bottlenecks or to pinpoint the cause of problems.
The founders of Anacapa Software took a different approach. You need not take a whole battery of medical tests for the doctor to know that you seem to be in good health. Similarly you should not have to capture, decode and analyze all network traffic in order to know if users are receiving acceptable Service Levels. But until now, there was no simple system to measure response time on complex internetworks. Proponents of RMON say it will do it. And it can if you are prepared for the associated costs, complexity and the caliber of trained personnel required.
NetScore is the result of the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid). NetScore uses the tools already available to network users and does not require any additional network hardware. NetScore simply measures round trip response times when preset operations are automatically called on a regularly scheduled basis.
At this moment most network managers and administrators are unable to determine if users are losing productivity because the network is slow. They wait until the phone rings with a complaining user asking for help. Then they may have to sneaker net to the user location just to verify the complaint. NetScore data is available for administrator to see with a browser from any location, on demand.
Without NetScore, just ask a network administrator to give you a report, say on Engineering Network Station 2 showing Response Time Service Levels for the last few minutes or hours. They can't generate such a report since the response time data does not exist. NetScore is designed to give continuous response time data both in real time and historical. It is a 24X7 surveillance monitor.
We at Anacapa are not challenging the use of good fault finding network management tools. They are important and necessary. But so is the need to know when users are being adequately served and when they are not. In real time before the help desk phone rings.
Another major consideration is cost. Network engineers have more screens to look at, more roll outs to manage than most can handle. If there is to be a simple surveillance system it has to be simple and very inexpensive. Petty cash inexpensive. And not needing engineers to install or operate. We have accomplished that with NetScore.
NetScore does the job for networks of several users or hundreds or thousands. It is a great tool for the network that has remote access users. NetScore, running in the background on the remote users PC, will track the response time data. When needed the administrators at the office can see the data from their Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer.
Jonathan Youngman, President has extensive hands on experience in software development. The previous 5 years were devoted to development of network management systems for large internetworks with SNA
hosts. Warren Sullivan, Executive VP, has spent the last 4 years as Director Of Sales, Marketing and
Business Development with a company developing network management
systems.
Anacapa Software
15577 Mallory Court
Moorpark, CA 93021 USA
Tel: 805-523-1745
Fax: 805-523-0595
email: warrens@anacapa.com
Return To Home Page