Thank you for the explanation James. I will follow through on the request
to Tivoli.




From: James Shanks <James_Shanks AT TIVOLI DOT COM> on 12/10/99 10:57 PM

Please respond to Discussion of IBM NetView and POLYCENTER Manager on
      NetView <NV-L AT UCSBVM.UCSB DOT EDU>

To:   NV-L AT UCSBVM.UCSB DOT EDU
cc:
Client:
Subject:  Re: NetView 5.1.2 Ping Utility




Ken -

Sending an enhancement request and complaining bitterly about what you
perceive
as a loss of function is exactly what I think you should do, else your
complaints may not reach the right ears.

Sometimes developers do just what their managers tell them to do, and are
forced
to ignore the advice of others who are closer to the broad base of
customers.
The real answer here (though I may get shot for saying so) is that a very
big
customer put pressure on Tivoli to provide them with a change in the code
so
that a ping from the GUI would update status on the map.  That meant, of
course,
that netmon would have to do the ping, and wait for, and process the
response.
Hence they are now "one at a time".  The change was put into 5.1.2 because
the
same big customer objected to putting on "special" fixes.

 I think you are correct that making this optional would have been better,
but
that would have meant a GUI menu change and many documentation changes as
well,
and those could not have been done in a service release (new books only get
published at new version or major re-write time), so that was rejected.
Which
all goes to prove, I guess, that new function should not be introduced in a
service level no matter whom demands it.  The longer I work in service, the
more
I am convinced of that, but I am not in management.

Sorry for your difficulty.  But you are right.  If you want multiple pings
for
those purposes you describe, then you will have to do them from the command
line, at least for now.  My apologies.

James Shanks
Tivoli (NetView for UNIX) L3 Support



Ken Karasek <KGKARASE AT HEWITT DOT COM> on 12/10/99 06:34:36 PM

Please respond to Discussion of IBM NetView and POLYCENTER Manager on
NetView
      <NV-L AT UCSBVM.UCSB DOT EDU>

To:   NV-L AT UCSBVM.UCSB DOT EDU
cc:    (bcc: James Shanks/Tivoli Systems)
Subject:  NetView 5.1.2 Ping Utility




I have just recently upgraded from NV v4.1.2 to NV v5.1.2.  I have
discovered that the ping utility that is supplied with NV now only allows
for a single ping.  No options, no choice. WHY??

 I have used this utility in the past to discover nodes that were in my
seed file that netmon did not place on the maps. As long as I could ping
the node from an xterm window, I was assured that by using the ping utility
(from 4.x), that NV would place the node in the map after a number a pings
were sent. It appears I do not have that luxury any more. Why would any one
want limit the utility to just a single ping? Especially when the user is
locked in by the app and not even allowed to make adjustments to fit their
requirements. Seems short-sighted to me whoever made this decision. At
least some one in development could have allowed a configuration change in
an /app-defaults/ping  file. What about monitoring response times from
pings? Can't use the GUI for that anymore.

Enough soap box. Is there a workaround? Or I am left with submitting an
enhancement request to Tivoli to restore ping's previous functionality?