MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — With its Route Explorer tool, routing-protocol developer Packet Design LLC is moving to a more traditional model of product deliverables. The route discovery and analysis tool passively monitors routing networks in real-time to move visualization software beyond the static simulator stage.
Route Explorer debuts just as Packet Design has spun off a wholly owned subsidiary dubbed CNS, for "Clouds, Not Strings," that will look for opportunities to offer point solutions directly to enterprises and equipment vendors that are not ready to license code. That was the original business model Packet Design developed under its "incubator" model.
"As the telecom bubble burst, we realized that an incubator effort wouldn't work for companies that needed to bring products to market right away, but weren't ready to take on software licenses," said Packet Design founder Judy Estrin, the former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems Inc. "That's where CNS makes its tactical play."
This product effort from Packet Design comes as the company is moving to spin off independent for-profit companies in vertical markets, such as the wireless-oriented Vernier Networks. Moving products directly from Packet Design will not slow down the creation of spin-offs, Estrin insisted, nor will it slow Packet Design's own basic research in advanced realms such as BGP-4 routing.
The strategy for releasing the Route Explorer diagnostic tool was to take network management away from the limited world of Layer 2 visibility. Any useful router analysis tool has to be able to view router lookup tables from a Layer 3 control plane, Estrin said. The Packet Design tool builds a routing map as though it were a physical router, then compiles relevant information in a database. The Explorer application makes it possible to correlate the database to external information such as server, jitter and latency statistics.
Using the database, Router Explorer builds a visual graph of the network, highlighting link failures and route "flapping" problems as they are discovered. The customer can compare that with historical data on the network behavior, or perform simulations on how the network would behave if certain critical routes were changed. Historical analyses and future simulations can be run as time-based "movies" in the graphical environment, providing easy-to-grasp models of how router networks behave over time.
The first release of the tool, with support for Open Shortest Path First and Intermediate System-Intermediate System protocols, will be available in the third quarter for $25,000. Additional routing protocols will be added in later releases, the company said.
