Over a decade ago I was just learning about LANs for my small business. Although I had decades of experience in IT, my exposure to TCP/IP/Ethernet trouble shooting was limited.
I had several servers networked on a LAN for file sharing and shared Internet access. When I relocated one of those servers to a remote corner of the building, network performance for that server ground almost to a halt. I checked the wiring, which was brand new, connections etc., but everything seemed physically fine, and I could ping the server no problem.
Then I started searching for troubleshooting tools. I tried many. Most were either too cryptic or reported nothing was wrong.
Then I stumbled upon WhatsUp Gold (WUG) from Ipswitch, Inc. and after installing a 30-day free trial of the standard version I began to trouble shoot my LAN. WUG was wonderful! It had an intuitive interface, produced a nice topology map, and told me things about my network infrastructure I never knew before. I probably learned more about LANs and Microsoft networking in one day than I had in the whole previous year.
Having gotten comfortable with WUG, I addressed the network performance problems with this one server. In no time at all, I learned that it was experiencing huge packet losses and the likely cause was too long a cable run. Given that I had, indeed, moved that server quite a distance from the patch panel, that seemed logical. I put a new switch between the server and the patch panel, and the problem was instantly solved!
For the rest of the trial period, I played with WUG and came to love it. As the end of the trial neared I explored purchasing a license for WUG, but at more than $1,500 for a single license I was dismayed. That was way over my budget, and I ended up not purchasing it. To this day I miss WUG.
Action Item: Ipswitch should offer a license option for small businesses that is truly affordable and put the “S” back in SMB.
Footnotes:
