That little blue cube-looking thing may be modest in appearance, but it is pretty robust for network performance testing. It comes from a Korean company called NEXTLab, and the product name is netMeter. (Also see the Korean product page here.) I’ve been kicking tires on the netMeter in pr-release here at Wirednot HQ deep in the heartland, and have found it to be well-designed, easy to master. and pretty useful for common wired network analysis tasks.
Comes in Two Flavors
I’ve been testing the 1 Gig model, which is pretty small- like two Raspberry Pi’s stacked on top of each other kinda small. There is also a 10 Gig model available UTP-interfaced model- like so:
Features and Functionality
The short answer to “What does it do?” is it connects to the LAN then on out to the Internet, where you control it via a web page that looks like this (at the time of writing) on a laptop:
The netMeter UI also plays well on mobile devices:
From there, anyone involved with networking can grasp the navigation options. I didn’t have cause to exercise the IPTV testing. I’m also freely admitting that I was not familiar with TWAMP after 27+ years in networking, but I did run through pretty much the rest of it repeatedly. In NEXTLab’s own words:
Whether you need to ensure that your network connection complies with Service Level Agreements (SLA) or need to collect all measured data, netMeter is a precision network measurement device designed to support you throughout your network tasks.
That is a pretty fair description of how I would quantify the tester as well. It has a nice history function of past tests that is easily viewed, and I did suggest that it would be nice to schedule tests at specific times or intervals. The company seems receptive to feedback so we’ll see where that goes over time.
Pricing Model
Remember that it’s early in the platform’s rollout, but the early pricing on the website shows some innovative thinking on the part of NEXTLab beyond the base cost of $299 per individual 1 Gig tester:
Impressions
Whether the envisioned use is for a tester that you can take with you as roam from environment to environment in your support duties or as a long-term in-place tester (like put one in every branch site), I found the netMeter to “feel” professional and consistent in it’s performance. The UI is effective and complete, yet easy to use. As mentioned above, some interval-based testing or test scheduling would add value, but at this price point the lack of those features isn’t a show-stopper.
The netMeter is generally a WAN/high-level network tester and does it’s job very well. It would be a nice compliment to a more granular LAN-oriented portable tool like the Netool.io which gets down into the nitty-gritty of individual switches, VLANs and switches and such.
I’m assuming that purchase price gets you some sort of hardware warranty on the netMeter, but I did not discuss that with NEXTLab specifically.
More Information
Public release is scheduled for July 1 of this year. NEXTLab can be reached here for more information.
See a video review from Network Advisor here.
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