Observer’s VoIP Expert is designed to help manage, troubleshoot, and maintain VoIP traffic across your network.

Convenient and comprehensive at-a-glance summarie:s

• VoIP Traffic Summary
  
• Call Summary
  
• Voice Quality Scoring
  
• Precedence (QoS)
  
• Summary Graphs
  
  

Detailed views with in-depth Call Detail Records

• Addresses
  
• Status (Open, closed, fail)
  
• Number of packets, packet bytes, packet loss
  
• Start time, initial setup duration, duration
  
• Current jitter, maximum jitter
  
• MOS, R-factor
  
• QoS for each call
  
• Number of packets that arrive out of order
  
• Detailed analysis for packet loss and delay
  
• Gap density, average gap duration
  
  

Observer is the first enterprise-driven, multi-topology, distributed network analyzer written in native 64-bit Windows with a version of 32-bit included. Now, whether your platform is 32-bit, 64-bit or a combination, Observer can maximize the benefits of your operating system for packet capture and analysis. For example, with 32-bit Windows, Observer offers the industry-leading capture buffer, a maximum of 4 GB. With 64-bit, your memory buffer is only limited by the operating system – with the potential for a capture buffer of up to 128 GB.

64-bit also delivers significant enhancements for the Network Instruments’ Gen2 Gigabit Capture card. For example, the Gen2 card can now offer double the port density. With multiple port options on the card, you can now use ports individually for monitoring SPAN sessions, combine ports for full-duplex capture, or combine full-duplex ports for trunked applications or any combination of these setups.

32-bit and 64-bit is included with Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite and every Network Instruments Probe Appliance equipped with the Gen2 Capture Card.

Track conversations and transactions through up to 10 segments, hops, and routes with Observer’s new MultiHop Analysis. This offers network administrators a way to quickly pinpoint and eliminate delay happening at any point during transactions. Observer tracks conversations for up to 10 hops, so you can easily see across routes or segments. MultiHop Analysis is ideal for pinpointing bottlenecks within specific conversations across multiple links or to verify if 3rd party service providers are performing to their Service Level Agreement.

Use MultiHop Analysis on individual network conversations to:

• Isolate if slowdowns are caused by network delay or system processes
  
• Identify packet loss and location
  
• Measure one-way delay, round-trip delay, and individual hop delay
  

MultiHop Analysis offers individual displays including:

• Connection Dynamics – shows delay packet-by-packet, hop-by-hop
  
• Hop Summary – shows delay from selected conversations in aggregate, providing average delay from multiple conversations over time and average time lost due to drops
  
• Summary Statistics – provides a textual summary display of selected conversations
  
• MultiHop Analysis is applicable to WAN links, Ethernet connections, wireless traffic, and gigabit networks.
  
  
  

Available in Expert Observer and Observer Suite.

Observer 11 and the GigaStor unveil a new paradigm in network troubleshooting. For example, time-based troubleshooting and mining through enormous amounts of data is now easier than ever. Observer 11 integrates a new timeline interface for the GigaStor, which manages, displays, and analyzes capture histories as large as 8 TBs.

The GigaStor is ideal for transaction-heavy organizations, dealing with data retention compliance (such as for Sarbanes-Oxley), network forensics, and troubleshooting sporadic and elusive network issues.

Observer 11 coupled with the GigaStor delivers significant enhancements:

• Navigate through massive amounts of data with ease
  
• Manages all data processing and Expert Analysis locally at the GigaStor
  
• Store up to 8 TB of data
  
• Capture wire-speed traffic continuously
  
• View conversations and transactions by time or with filters
  
• Obtain Expert analysis in real time and post capture
  
• Instantly create and save filters
  
• Select and auto-filter on individual statistics to quickly isolate issues
  

Available in Expert Observer or Observer Suite and the GigaStor.

With Observer 11, you will find new decodes for Citrix. With Citrix decodes, it is easy for Observer users to monitor and troubleshoot Citrix-served applications in-depth. Numerous other decodes and decode enhancements are also included.

New decodes for Citrix are available in Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite.

For enterprise administrators considered with network forensics, compliance, and security, Observer can now take captured traffic and recreate the communication in an easy-to-read format. Rebuild web pages (including images), reconstruct e-mails and instant messaging communication to gather hard evidence on network activity. Stream reconstruction can help maintain corporate Internet usage policies, assist law enforcement, and contribute toward Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Available in Observer, Expert Observer and Observer Suite.

Observer 11 includes the powerful, sophisticated pattern-matching capability of Perl-compatible regular expressions. Wildcard by single or multiple characters, range of characters, number of characters, and more.

Filtering is available in Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite.

Observer 11 adds further value to Network Trending by now supporting trending for Application Analysis, VLANs, and Wireless Site Survey. New reports for VLAN summary and Application Analysis are also available in the Observer ready-made report list.

Network Trending is available in Observer, Expert Observer, and Observer Suite. Application Analysis Trending is available in Expert Observer and Observer Suite. Web Reports are available in Observer Suite.

Aggregate or separate traffic streams as required or desired with Network Instruments’ Gen2 Capture Card driver and 64-bit Windows. Now, every Gen2-equipped Network Instruments’ probe can dissect, segment, and combine different physical ports prior to capture rather than depending on filters to sort through traffic in the post-capture phase. For example, on the Gen2 8-port capture card, you can easily set up ports 1-4 to be treated as a single data stream, and separate each of the four remaining ports into separate data streams.