Adios, Network General

When Network General was reanimated in 2004 I asked “is there life left for Sniffer?” Today, my news colleague Paula Musich reported that NetScout intends to acquire Network General, the once storied leader of packet capture and analysis and creator of the Sniffer product line. From all reports, the entity known as Network General has been going down in price since it was purchased by McAfee in 1997 at the beginning of the dot-com bubble. The long story short is that the combined companies became known as Network Associates, the Oakland Coliseum joined Candlestick Park and the San Francisco baseball stadium in a degrading parade of name changes and today, Network General, again, is no more. Eaten by a much smaller company, matched against fierce competitors and losing value with each pass of the hat, the question now is: can NetScout and Network General effectively join together? You can get a concise history of Network General and an insightful look at the acquisition at Love My Tool in a post written by Tim O’Neill. I last reviewed a Network General product, the Network Intelligence Suite in Oct. 2006. I started using Sniffer tools around 1993 when I worked at Persoft doing technical support as a wee lad just getting started in network troubleshooting. I’m curious to see what will happen, but one thing is sure: after this many times through the wash cycle, my memories of Network General are much stronger than the brand that got acquired today.