With the complexities of today's network environment, it's always good to have an understanding of the basic layout of your network. Neon Software's LANsurveyor 8.5 for Windows provides the network map you need, and some desktop management and basic security  tools.

The software includes a network mapping tool and client software that it calls Neon responder. You don't need to install the Neon responder client for basic network mapping, although the management functions do require it.

Navigating through a large network map with this product to find a specific node or device might be difficult without a way to filter or search. To help with this issue, LANsurveyor includes a navigation pane for displaying map items in a hierarchical tree view. Graphical display options include linear, symmetrical and circular. The linear option displays devices on the same subnet connected to a continuous straight line, while symmetrical and circular use a round display for grouping. You even can save a copy of your map in several image formats including JPEG, Windows Bitmap or Enhanced Metafile (EMF). Microsoft Visio will directly import EMF files to allow further editing.

Another feature directly related to creating a map is the poll list. A poll list includes routers and other map objects that LANsurveyor polls at a user-defined rate. Using the poll list, we really liked being able to keep tabs on the status of key network components, along with performance statistics.

Neon doesn't market LANsurveyor as a desktop management tool, but it does provide the same functions as you might find in products such as LANdesk or Microsoft's System Management Server. Functions include system shutdown or restart, synchronize clocks, send file or folder, send instant message, store notes about a specific node, stop a running process and launch an application. Other features include hardware/software inventory and software metering.

On the hardware inventory side, LANsurveyor had a little trouble with our hyper-threaded server box. It reported four CPUs, when we only had two. For software inventory, LANsurveyor did a pretty good job, although some items were ambiguous. One example was five entries titled "Microsoft Office 2003," with five different version numbers but no indication as to what part of Office (such as Word or Excel) they represented. Software metering simply lists all the running processes, although you can filter by name.