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InfoSim's products appear to be new offerings on the market. Certainly they are new to me. Their history indicates that they are an academic spin-off, created around 1998/2000, and primarily operating in Germany.
As I indicated, their network measurement and management products are not familiar to me. However, based on the write-ups, I can say several things about their approach. It might be useful to reference a previous response on Best Practices for network monitoring:
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/ateQuestionNResponse/0,289625,sid7_cid522837_tax293255,00.html
First, let's look at the advantages:
They take a "synthetic" approach to generating a network view, combining all the data available, including SNMP, RMON, passive flows and active sampling (netflow, sflow, ping), Cisco SSA agent, and other sources like application-specific queries (DNS, HTTP, SMTP).
They offer various forms of graphing and reporting that appear flexible and relevant
They offer host discovery and automated topology generation
The system offers information at several Layers of the application/network path, from Layer 2 (frames) to Layer 7 (application).
Next, let's look at the disadvantages:
They state explicitly that it is necessary to own and control all the hardware (switches, routers, etc.) in order to implement their solutions – seeing into and through networks you don't own (more and more important these days) will be unlikely
Most of the their data sources are point sources (which can be highly valuable) but only the SSA and ping sources provide end-to-end views – SSA is only between Cisco devices and ping is minimal as a data source – this makes it difficult to resolve end-to-end paths that involve end-hosts
The system mines information across many Layers of the application/network path, from Layer 2 to Layer 7 – depending on how they do this, it may make troubleshooting easier or harder
Extrapolating any of this to an actual experience is just so much guesswork. They make evaluation copies available – so if it sounds like the right choice, download and give it a try.
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