EtherScope Series II Network Assistant

LAN Network Assistant
This application is essentially a packet capturing, logging and reporting application which can search devices, find the amount of traffic transfered between devices and report in case of network problems. But that's not the great thing about it. There is a lot more. For instance, if you try to search a class B network for active devices using a PC based scanner, the process will at least take 15 - 20 minutes depending on the type of processor you are using.

This device when connected to a Class B network easily detected the active devices in less than 2 minutes. And that's not all, the device was also able to detect other devices which are on some other subnet and showed them through a warning message.

One of the other features is its capability to detect and tell the distance (the cable length) from these devices to the next connected node. Which means you can just connect it to any cable whose other end is terminated to any network device.

It will tell you the length of the wire between these two spots. Other great feature of the devices is its capability to trace the switch route to any machine. Let's say you have a faulty machine in your network somewhere in the building and you want to find exactly where the machine is, this device can tell you the route through the switches (managed switches) and its ports. For example, there are five switches between this device and the faulty machine, then it will detect all the five switches and their respective port numbers from where the connection is happening.

This is a great feature because one of the biggest challenges for a network admin is to figure out and pinpoint the devices in a huge campus with lots of cascaded switches.