LANScan
Version 2.01c(S1)
Release
Notes
Thanks
for your interest in LANScan Network Monitoring software. We are working hard
to continually improve LANScan - adding features, improving performance and
correcting problems.
If you
purchased a LANScan Plus version, you'll receive updates of LANScan for a full
year after purchase automatically. If you purchased a single license version of
LANScan, you'll receive notification of new versions and upgrades may be
purchased at an attractive price.
Version
2.01c has several important product improvements, documented below:
Performance – LANScans’ real time database has
been significantly upgraded to supported high traffic levels. Previously, high
levels of network traffic could cause LANScan to become unresponsive, use all
of the CPU and/or use all virtual memory.
On
reasonably powerful PCs(Pentium III 500 Mhz with 128Mb RAM), LANScan can easily
monitor 100MB LANs running at 25-50% utilization.
Please
note that many factors can influence LANScans’ ability to accurately monitor a
network, including the performance of the PC, use of other programs
simultaneously on the same PC, capability of the Network Interface Card, and
the Operating System used.
Follow
these general guidelines to get the best performance from LANScan:
1> Use Windows NT or Windows 2000. Both are more reliable than
Windows 95, 98 or ME.
2> Limit the refresh rate and number of views open in LANScan.
Drawing graphics is an expensive CPU task. Limiting the amount of graphics open
in LANScan views leaves more processor time for analyzing network traffic.
3> When in doubt, add more RAM. LANScans’ real time database
can grow rapidly on busy networks. Increasing system RAM, so that more of the
database can remain in memory, will improve performance.
4> Use PCI network cards. Avoid older ISA Bus or PC Card
interface network cards when possible. These can reduce overall performance as
the system bus interface is not as fast as PCI cards.
Conversation
and Protocol views – In
order to improve system performance, Conversation and Protocol views with more
than 100 entries will not be drawn as bar graphs. With this many bar graph
segments, performance suffers, and the graph becomes unreadable. LANScan will
now draw an empty graph in this case.
New
‘MAC Only’ Reporting Feature This new feature is for advanced users only. When MAC Only
reporting is enabled, LANScan can be configured to ignore IP addresses for
certain MAC network addresses. This is useful for monitoring traffic to/from
Web Servers when bandwidth utilization numbers are needed, but individual IP
conversations are not important. Contact LANScan software for further details.
By default, this feature is disabled.
History
file may be reset on startup(LANScan Professional) When enabled, LANScan Professional
will use the current date to create a new LANScan History file on startup. This
makes it easy to generate unique daily traffic histories.
Workspace
may be selectively enabled/disabled(Disabled by Default) LANScan can retain the layout of open views and other windows in a
user workspace. Now LANScan will not prompt for a workspace unless the ‘Use
Workspace’ feature is enabled, and LANScan will start in a default workspace
configuration. Go to ‘Configure’ and ‘System
Settings’ to re-enable workspaces.
Percent
now displays correctly on Trend views
Device
Bandwidth corrected – Previously, if the network bandwidth was overridden for a
device, the percentage was calculated incorrectly – that is now fixed.
Installation
Run the
new executable to install LANScan. It is not necessary to uninstall the
previous version. Note that a new license code is required for this Beta
version.
A new
database must be created – previous version configuration databases are not
supported.
Known
Problems
‘Quick
View’ – Creating a
‘Quick Device View’ can cause LANScan to believe a permanent device has been
created with the name used in the Quick View. Close LANScan and restart to
clear the problem.
‘Crash
on closing Device View’
Opening a device view and closing without any network traffic to/from the
device can occasionally cause LANScan to crash.
Multiple
NIC cards - If
both cards have the same default name(displayed in the LANScan adapter dialog),
LANScan will crash on startup. To avoid the problem, do not let LANScan create
objects for all adapters. Create the objects manually and change the names to
unique names.
If you
need support or wish to contact LANScan Software:
via
email: support@lanscan.com
via the
Web: www.lanscan.com
via
phone: 804 817 0014
via
Fax: 804 817 0173
via
Post:
LANScan
Software, Inc.
2246
Ivy Road, Suite 15
Charlottesville,
VA 22903