In This Edition:
This month's newsletter is all about putting the latest tools and tips for network management into your
hands. We asked our Head Geek, Josh Stephens, to give us his top three troubleshooting tips for common network
issues. This is just the tip of the management iceberg, though - check out the rest of this month's newsletter for
more expert tips that you won't want to miss.
Tip #1: Check the cable, check the cable, check the cable...
Okay, it's sad, but
true. Even with all of our 21st century technical advancements, checking the cable is always the best place to start.
The tricky part is determining which cable and where to find it. Luckily, SolarWinds can help:
- Switch Port Mapper in Engineer's Toolset automatically determines which devices are connected to each switch and
hub port on your network, so you'll never have to crawl through closets again to locate a cable. Try It Free
>
- LANsurveyor leverages multiple network discovery methods to provide an
integrated OSI Layer 2 and Layer 3 topology map that eliminates the guesswork in determining how all of your
network devices are connected to one another. Try It Free >
Tip #2: Find out who's hogging up all the bandwidth
Let's face it... today, the
network is used for all kinds of crazy activities - many of which aren't work related (and happen to be way more
fun). Still, it's important to know when the dev team's lunchtime World of Warcraft® throw-down is actually taking
down the mission-critical ERP application. You can put the brakes on the bandwidth hogs with these solutions:
Tip #3: Validate configuration changes
Not having your devices configured
properly can cause an array of network nightmares, as well as pose a security risk. To prevent getting paged at
3am and to save you some valuable time, we recommend using these handy tools to validate your
configurations:
Okay, you've heard what our Head Geek Josh Stephens has to say. Time for you to participate! Tell us your
tips for troubleshooting network woes with SolarWinds solutions and we'll send you a free t-shirt to thank you for
your time.
Share Your Tips & Spread the Word Now
>
Get Your Creative Wheels in Motion with These Sample Spread-the-Word Posts
"...no matter where we are Orion will let us know if there is a problem. That my friend is peace of mind." - bash
"My company and I are currently using Engineer's Toolset and in the process of trying out Orion and we just love the software... Good
software, excellent customer service." - Scott Prince
"Recently, SolarWinds helped our team uncover a significant performance issue with our WAN that led to a
$167,000 credit from our data provider. Now that's an ROI payback!" - khruska
Spread the Word Now
>
SolarWinds Takes Home the Gold... Again!
2008 has already been a banner year for SolarWinds products! We're proud to announce that thanks to
support from our community, Orion and ipMonitor secured spots in the network monitoring hall of fame with awards from Searchnetworking.com, Network World, and WindowsNetworking.com.
The Searchnetworking.com Product Leadership Awards recognize products that enterprise IT professionals
should consider adding to their "A" lists of networking products to evaluate. Winning products were selected by
1,800 networking professionals based on their assessment of products currently deployed within their own
enterprises. The WindowsNetworking.com awards are determined by votes cast by network administrators visiting
the informative website. Thanks to all of you who took the time to vote!
 2008 SearchNetworking.com
Product Leadership Award:
Gold Award Winner in Network Monitoring
2008 SearchNetworking.com Product
Leadership Award:
Silver Award Winner in Applications & Network Management
 2008 WindowsNetworking.com
Readers' Choice Awards:
Winner in the Network Monitoring Category
 Network World Magazine:
2008 Best of the Tests Winner
Try Orion FREE for 30
Days >
Try ipMonitor FREE for 21 Days >
Ready to Load Up Engineer's Toolset on Your New Laptop?
It's Easy with License Manager!
SolarWinds has a new free tool that empowers you, our customer, to reset your licenses when you get a new
laptop or need to upgrade a server. Now you can do it without ever needing to contact SolarWinds. Using the new
License Manager, it is easy to move your SolarWinds software (excluding ipMonitor and LANsurveyor) to a new
machine with just a few clicks!
Download License Manager Today >
Product Tips from the Head Geek Himself
Every month proposed product tips come in from all corners of the SolarWinds community. This month, we
hit up the Head Geek himself (a.k.a Josh Stephens) for his product advice and he gave us two cool tips that you
can use everyday.
Product Tip #1: Using Engineer's Toolset Bandwidth Gauges in Transparent
Mode
Lots of you already use the Bandwidth Gauges in Engineer's Toolset to keep real-time tabs on the performance of key network interfaces. If you
want to take the cool factor to the next level, set the gauges to go into "Transparent Mode" so that they fade into
the background of your desktop, but are visible while you're working on other things. That way you can always keep
an eye on them... even when you're watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica via the Slingbox. To enable this
feature, choose "Settings" and select the "Transparency" tab.
Try Engineer's Toolset FREE for 30
Days > 
Product Tip #2: Using Engineer's Toolset IP Address Management with
Orion
Thousands of you use the IP Address Management tool in Engineer's Toolset to manage your IP address space. For those of you who also own Orion, you can configure the IP Address Management tool so that it automatically
publishes your IP addressing data to an HTML page displayed in the Orion web console. In fact, you can even
create custom resources so that you can do IP address assignments right from the Orion console.
To configure HTML publishing in Orion, select "Settings" and then "Preferences". Be sure to visit Thwack.com to see other cool things that SolarWinds users are doing to integrate Engineer's
Toolset and Orion.
Try Orion FREE for 30
Days > 
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