From some history data, I found the Network General revenue reports. We can see during 5 years (1992~1997), Network General revenue increase from 64M to 240M. Now, Solarwinds filing the IPO request which mentioned its revenue reach more than 60 million. Will Solarwinds be another NGC for a rocket boost?
10G is not a new word which stands for a network type carrying 10 times of Gigabits traffic in each second, it can be 10 Gigabits Ethernet or OC192 POS link. A few customers already implemented 10G at their backbone and the price per port for 10G is going to be affordable.
The high volume of network traffic means many packets. On 10G, one direction may have up to 15 million packets in each second. Most x86 based systems are not ready for processing over 10 million data pieces in a single second. So to provide an analysis solution, the 10G means nightmare to most packet analysis vendors.
The Packet analyzing companies are now fighting with the challenge. The solution are mainly for 10Gigabits Ethernet.
NetScout released a 10GE probe around 1 or 2 years ago which bases on their Gigabits probe platform. The 10GE probe can process around 1 million packets per second which means around 5G ~ 8G bits traffic can be handled well in a real network condition with larger average packets size. However, if dealing with some small packets like syn flood, the NetScout probe can only work well till 1 Gigabits level.
Network General previously launched a 10GE portable analyzer, the product was almost just for show without enough real customer cases. BTW, Network General developed many “just for show” products such as a Sniffer Wireless for PDA and a web performance management product in the year of 2000.
A japanese vendor called ClearSight offers a 10 Giga capture box which can be called first real design-for-10G packet analysis product. The 10G analyzer is designed to capture packets in line rate and featured mainly offline analysis facilities. By applying to Forensics purpose, the product maybe useful; however, lacking of the realtime expert systems and protocol inspection features, the product cannot support real traffic analysis in 10G condition very well.
After that, Network Instruments and WildPackets tap into 10GE area by their own ways as well. Both Network Instruments and WildPackets are software only vendors in around 7 years ago. They began to be more hardware/appliance vendors after the revenue paused to increase fast by providing software only solution. Network Instruments directly runs into traffic storage market with Gigastor product line which is successful. The OEM partnership between NetQoS and Network Instruments strengthen the market share of the Gigastor products.
WildPackets focused into Wireless in the beginning, the wireless analysis product bring them good revenue stream and reputation. However, the wireless analysis market grows slow. So now WildPackets emphasize the traffic storage and analysis solution with several important releases on a product line called Omnipliance.
Both Network Instruments and WildPackets had the strength in analysis with many decodes and expert systems as Network General. So the performance of their systems are not very good. Their products can provide a good realtime view into 10GE environment, however, they are not able to delivery good user experience on the 10G as well as they have done good on the lower bandwidth networks.
Till today, there is no perfect packet analysis solution for 10G, the coming WildPackets SuperCore maybe worth to see the actual performance. However, limited by the computer bus speed and analysis complexity, the analysis software plus a high-end server still cannot indicate a great future of 10G packet analysis.
There are a few FPGA/ASIC players entered this market as well, Endace, a New Zealand based company, provides 10G capture network card to offload the x86 cpu computing
pressure. GigaMon provides a solution base on one-to-many distribution purpose to share the analysis work on multiple machines. Napatech, who was Xyratex, 
recently announced a 20G pattern match card beside their famous multiple port giga/10G analysis cards.
Eventually, the 10G analysis will come to reality and be common, let’s wait and see how long it’s gonna happen.
The Network management and Application performance management vendor PacketBone, releases a new style network analysis product.
July 1, 2008 — The network management and application performance management vendor PacketBone today releases a new product called BoneLight.
PacketBone claims the product is a start of revolutions in the network analysis area. BoneLight will not rely on traditional independent GUI to analyze the traffic, instead, BoneLight integrate deeply into Microsoft Windows and Office systems to provide seamless analysis features inside of Operating Systems.
BoneLight provide trace file conversions among libpcap/winpcap, cisco ids traces, Sniffer Pro cap, WildPackets pkt and Observer bfrs. The Wireshark and Endace Dag ERF are supported either. BoneLight can convert the trace files into an Excel xlsx/xls result, it does provide a brand new experience for the network analysis people.
BoneLight is not only a trace file tool but also bringing benefits to the
communication and collaboration for the network guys troubleshooting problem. The integrated Outlook preview handler provides a chance for people using Email and Exchange directly see and input ideas about traffic inside of Office software.
June 9, 2008 - Blue Coat Systems announces the acquisition of Packeteer is completed.
Last year (Sep 20, 2007). Network- and application-performance management vendor announced plans to acquire Network General for roughly $205 million.
The deal wascompleted in Nov 2007. The merged company has around 750 staffs with the head quarter located in Boston and San Jose. NetScout didn’t have experience in an equal size acquisition in its history from 1984 when NetScout was founded. This acquisition is obviously a big risk and huge opportunity for NetScout to enlarge their competitive advantages in the network performance management market.
Network General invested resources into mobile carrier analyzing technology which includes 3G protocol analysis and expert intelligence. NetScout has also the plan to penetrate into the the mobile carrier market, so this merge will generate a new strong player in the telecom/mobile traffic analysis market.
NetScout indicates the changes to major customers are mostly benefits. The existing customer may get double-armed nGenius product with Sniffer technology built-in for their future upgrades. But till now, the benefits did not reflect clearly except NetScout decided to release a multi-thousand-dollar product, Sniffer Application Intelligence, into free to their exist customers.
NetScout Stock (Nasdaq:NTCT) price change in last a few month during and after acquires Network General
-> 
Packeteer was a star company. The company’s patented technology in traffic shaping did change a lot in the industry. Many customers like this concept and get this box at the WAN links.
However, the product designed for idiot cannot last long which is a law for the packet industry. After years and many installations, the customers found their dream cannot be realized by Packeteer. The traffic shaping only solves 10% of the problems. Well, when RiverBed, Cisco carries WAAS and Juniper got Peribits, Packeteer started to face real challenges. Even partnering with Microsoft to ship the iShape appliance for broader market did not change the trend.
Don’t be evil. This is a famous google term. This is for management in public company too. The competition will not destroy the company, the corruption will. In 2007, Packeteer was exposed a finance scandal for tax evasion. The confidence of the employees, managements and investors are defeated.
Figure 1. Shows Packeteer price change after the tax evasion exposed.
The Bluecoat was mainly a web proxy company. The company is a more sales driven company without outstanding unique technology. The acquisition will bring many valuable technical resources to the company, so Bluecoat pays much comparing to the NetScout/Network General deal. The $268 million deal is just a start to merge, the real merge for the people and technology will be a long way to go.
This acquisition annouced at April 21, 2008. PacketEvents will continue to monitor this event.
SolarWinds Inc. hopes to raise $250 million in an initial public offering, according to regulatory filings.
The number of shares and the price range for the offering have not been determined for the Austin company.
J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. and Lehman Brothers Inc. will act as joint book-runners for the offering and UBS Securities LLC and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC will serve as co-managers.
below is the Solarwinds financial facts about recent 3 years
March 24, 2008 — Napatech today announced the investment of $5 million from Ferd Venture, Northzone Ventures and DTU Innovation. Napatech is the leader in programmable high speed Ethernet network adapters. The investment coincides with Napatech’s acquisition of the network adapter business of storage solution leader Xyratex.
There is forming a new industry base on network packets, we can see many solutions in routing, QoS, analysis, security, optimization, application performance, almost all of them base on packet technology.
So the mission statement for PacketEvents is to record the live history in this industry