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Contents 
Introduction
Exinda Optimizer 4700
eTrust Network Forensics
Observer 10.1
Fluke OptiView Series II
PacketShaper 6500
Specifications
How we tested
Editor's choice
About RMIT |
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The PacketShaper Seeker 6500 is an appliance whose main job is to classify and analyse network traffic and then enforce policy-based bandwidth allocation.
We tested the 1500 some time ago which is a smaller version of the 6500.
There are six different packet shapers available from Packeteer. They support throughputs of 2Mb to 1Gb. The 6500 is placed in the midrange and supports 100Mb. However there are 14 different versions of the 6500 and the one we looked at is the entry shaper which mainly focuses on monitoring. If you want compression it will cost you an extra AU$6600.
There are six different packets shapers available from Packeteer. They support throughputs of 2Mbps to 1Gbps. The 6500 is placed in the midrange and supports 100Mbps.
The 6500 includes two 10/100Mbps ports located on the front of the unit. One of the ports is labelled "Inside" and this is how you plug into your LAN while the "Outside" port is connected to your router. The 6500 can also act as a pass-through device where, if the device was to fail, you would still have network access. There were also two LAN expansion slots available on the front of the unit and a serial port.
Setup was a breeze; you just have to launch a browser and type in its default out-of-the-box IP address and then you can change it to reflect your network. You can also use the serial port to set the IP address. You can, however, still do everything from the console if you prefer to do things this way.
The 3500 uses a Web-based GUI. This isn't the most user-friendly GUI and it can prove awkward to use at first. From the GUI you can do things like classify network traffic into categories which will enable you see what is running on your network, how much bandwidth each application is using, and how your applications are performing.
From the console you can view who the top-talking IPs are. And if a virus is sending requests back out to the Internet through someone's machine you will quickly be able to spot it out from here. The 3500 can do packet capture from the console as well, but you will need something like Ethereal to decode the packets.
The Packeteer uses Flow Detail Records (FDR), which is a method for gathering and processing per-flow statistics. Some think of it as NetFlow on steroids. It offers enhanced troubleshooting and forensic capabilities which will help you determine the source of a DoS attack, or you can view which ports are the busiest as well as see which hosts generated traffic through each port. It offers integration with accounting and billing programs, so for example, enterprises can track such things as each department's application usage and bill them accordingly -- and you can specify for how long you want to keep historical data.
The 3500 displays some great graphs, but exporting them can be messy. We were told you can use a utility which imports data from the 3500, then publishes the data back out to a Word document; or you can right click on the image and save it that way. There are other options. If you have multiple packet shapers (probably more than 10) -- you can use Packeteer's ReportCenter, which basically acts as a centralised collaboration tool which collects data from all your shapers and generates reports for you.
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