Subject: Survey of APPN management tools

From: "Michael O. Allen (919-254-4442)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 16:05:46 EDT

John Pickens has asked me if I could help him put together a list of
currently available (or prototypical or soon-to-be-available) tools for
"managing" APPN networks.  He is using the word management in the
broadest possible sense -- covering what we normally think of network
management as well as network planning, design, and administration.
John needs this information for a report that he is writing with Louise
Wells that compares APPN and TCP/IP.  For TCP/IP, there is an RFC that
catalogs the large number of tools that are currently available, but
nothing exists like that for APPN.  John would like to come up with as
many tools as possible for APPN management.
 
Can you please help me with this?  We don't have much time, since John
needs the information by Friday of this week (June 14).  I would like
for us to come up with a respectable list of tools for John's report.
A tool in this context need not be a full-blown product.  It might be a
feature of a product, it might be a code sample given away with a
product, it might be a prototype -- almost anything that is useful for
configuring, administering, monitoring, or operating an APPN network.
Examples include APING, NETDA, Alert display applications, alert
automation, commands to display status of APPN resources, etc.
 
Please respond directly to me via e-mail describing anything that you
are aware of that might be considered an APPN management tool.  Please
don't respond to this mailing list.  I'll consolidate the information
and forward it on to John sometime Friday.  (Sorry, but I'll be out of
the office on Thursday.)  I'll also make the list available to everyone
on the AIW mailing lists once it is ready.
 
Thanks in advance for your help!
Mike

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From: [email-masked] (John R. Pickens)
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 93 22:24:12 PDT

Mike thought of sending the request for information on APPN
management and adminstration tools to this distribution list.
Wish I'd thought of that.
 
What I am looking for is information similar to that of RFC 1470
(which obsoletes RFC 1147)- "FYI on a Network Management Tool
Catalog:  Tools for Monitoring and Debugging TCP/IP Internets
and Interconnected Devices".  {only replace "TCP/IP" with "APPN"}
 
Perhaps we could eventually put this into a similar format to that
of RFC 1470 (which has excellent indexes and cross-references
of the information).  But for now just beginning to assemble the
information would be a plus.
 
Some of the tools I've identified already include:
 
NetView
NetView/6000
NETDA/2
Testing tools from various vendors
Sniffer tools from various vendors
SNAPSHOT
TPNS
APING
Performance Tools/400
 
Some of the potential categories for tools include (see RFC 1470 for
definitions)
 
Alarm, Analyzer, Benchmark, Control, Debugger, Generator,
Manager, Map, Reference, Routing, Security, Status, Traffic

...and with that to prime the pump, I'm sure y'all can think of
many more....
 
Mike, are you volunteering to maintain the catalogue?  Let me know
how I can help.
 
JP
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