Problem Analysis. Network Trace improves problem determination by providing a simple and cost effective way to take a trace, locally or remotely, from any machine in the network. Traces simultaneously generated from multiple locations can be analyzed and compared to help isolate and diagnose problems.
Application Development. Network Trace provides a cost effective mechanism to reduce application development time. Network traffic between an application server and its client can be traced to provide insight into problems.
Performance Tuning. Traces can be taken to create a baseline for the performance of a network or a system. Additional traces can be taken at any time for comparison with the baseline. Analysis of these traces may be used to determine whether an application performance problem is network-wide, or isolated to a specific machine. Network Trace allows performance issues to be addressed proactively, before problems become overwhelming.
Network Health Check. Traces previously too costly and time consuming to take on a regular basis are now possible, enabling the network administrator to take a more proactive approach to network health. Using REXX, automated traces can be scheduled periodically for each network segment as a preventative maintenance measure.
Profiling. Network Trace can be used to profile client-server applications and network devices. Even the operating system can be profiled, when it is loaded via a remote IPL technology such as WorkSpace On-Demand or RIPL. An analysis of the communications between server and client machines, or among network devices, yields invaluable insight into the inner working sof these systems. For example one may determine: