NetGear NMS100 ProSafe Network Management Software

8/10 Netgear ProSafe NMS100

Unknown - 02/24/09

We have been evaluating Netgear's ProSafe NMS100 to give us a window into our existing network infrastructure. The price of the NMS100 was reasonable so we thought we'd kick the tires abit. Our installed equipment is multivendor; our routers are from Cisco, access points are from HP and the wireless bridges are Cisco. Our switches are primarily Netgear GS7xx series. Our phone system is from 3com; desktops are XP and our servers are a mix of WindowsServer 2003 and Redhat linux. The first thing we noticed was the evaluation version was dated Dec. 15, 2004; it is now 2009... as a result, the Netgear product set that was supported is obsolete. We noted that 3rd party support exists but there isn't any documented means of adding/building icons to represent newer Netgear or 3rd party products. In testing, we found that older GS724T and GS748T switches can not have the SNMP community set and therefore can not be used to provide traffic trending information. Worse, the NMS constantly tells you about it too but gives you no guide lines to resolve it. Only the GSM and FS series switches seem to have functional RMON capabilities so the tool is pretty limited in providing traffic trend analysis. Forget about determining who your TOP-talkers/TOP-listeners are; for that you need NTOP or some old DEC LANbridge 150's and LAN Traffic Monitor. With respect to trending, we found that the management console has to remain running, just having the management server running in the "tray" is not enough. Further, you can not graph traffic for multiple days, only for mid-night to mid-night. One of the things we had hoped to accomplish with this tool was the generation of maps that showed which MAC/IP address was attached to a particular port on a switch. You can get the MAC addresses for each port and you can build your map MANUALLY, so much for automation. Netgear's on-line documentation is sparse. If pressed to recommend this product, I'd have to give it a thumbs down.