At the invitation of Visual Networks, Core Competence, Inc. conducted an evaluation of the Visual UpTime™ WAN Service Level Management System, a wide area network support system designed to manage Frame Relay, X.25, dedicated line, and ATM network services for Visual Networks products.

Visual Networks provided a complete Visual UpTime™ management system. We used this system to study a network performance database collected by a large-scale Visual Networks Frame Relay customer. Visual Networks arranged interview time with the customer so that we could acquire an understanding of the role of WAN networking in the customer’s business and the WAN topology being managed by the Visual UpTime™ WAN Service Level Management System. During interviews with WAN operations staff and administrators, we discussed the customer’s WAN network management operations, work flows and instrumentation. From these interviews, we also obtained considerable insight into the customer’s expectations of Visual UpTime™, and whether those expectations were currently being met.

This paper presents a technical evaluation of the Visual UpTime™ product. The evaluation is in the form of a Case Study of a large distributed enterprise network with Frame Relay. We begin by providing an overview of the Visual UpTime™ product. We describe the customer’s WAN - the topology, services offered, and service level expectations. We next describe the customer’s WAN management operations, and explain the several roles Visual UpTime™ currently plays in the customer’s operations strategy. From the network performance database provided by the customer, we identified circumstances where the Visual UpTime™ system improved the customer’s ability to manage its WAN services. We also studied the database and discovered ways this customer could further enhance WAN service level management. Many of the results and recommendations we present here are generally applicable to large-scale enterprise networks using Frame Relay.

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