General Motors Corp’s Mountain View, California-based Hughes LAN Systems has made two additions to its Monet network management system, in the form of release 5.0 a new version – Monet Lite for networks of fewer than 75 SNMP agents. Version 5.0 incorporates the X Window protocol, enabling users anywhere on the network to access Monet’s SQL-based relational database and display information both for SNMP devices and the Motif user interface – a standard supported by the Open Software Foundation which runs on top of X Window. The new version adds to the dynamic icon capability enabling users to establish and customise icons that respond by changing colour or orientation. Also, it provides a graphical view of the Enterprise Hub, using icons, down to the module level, providing monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities. Ease of use of the Management Information Base is said to be enhanced, enabling information to be read into an SQL relational database. The new version includes prepackaged management information bases for all Hughes products, and those from SynOptics Communications Inc, Cabletron Systems Inc, David Systems Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Wellfleet Communications Inc, Proteon Inc, and Novell Inc’s LANtern network monitor. Monet 5.0 costs $15,000. The new Monet Lite package is claimed to give all of the functionality of Monet, with an upgrade to Monet possible with networks larger than 75 SNMP agents. It costs $7,450.
