First of all, let’s take a quick look at what both CAM and CPM are. When I refer to “cams” on the internet, I mean the software tools that many IT departments use for performing traffic analysis. These tools are generally a combination of applications such as Network Analyzer (NANO), and other software tools, like Wireshark and Traffic Monitor.
When I talk about “cams”, I’m referring to the tools that many network administrators actually use in their day-to-day work. They are tools that are designed to automatically monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic of your networks. They do this by taking a snapshot of your network’s physical configuration and sending it to you over the Internet. In exchange, the snapshot captures everything from the TCP/IP header of each packet to its destination address, and all of these details are then stored back on your computer for future analysis.
CAM, on the other hand, is used primarily when you need to take a snapshot of your network for other purposes than just for IT purposes. For example, you may want to look at the traffic to a website from your network. By using a CAM program, you can easily look at this traffic and see where the problems come from – and if they come from the website, how you can fix them.
CAM, though, is not quite as efficient at it’s cousin, and it does have some drawbacks. First of all, if you try to take a CAM snapshot without NANO installed on your system, you’ll find that it takes hours. Second, NANO is very inefficient, because it has no ability to do anything but take a snapshot of the network.
On the other hand, the reason why NANO is so much more efficient at the same time is that it has a sophisticated logging system built in. NANO will keep track of every single packet that is sent and received by your network, which allows it to provide a comprehensive view of the traffic coming in and going out of your network. This allows you to easily perform analysis on the packets that are coming in. {or going out. You’ll see exactly where your network is congested, and where it’s not, and can see exactly where problems can be fixed with better routing.
The only problem with the latter, however, is that NANO can be slow in certain cases. It’s not a fast enough tool to catch problems that happen often, such as when you’re under heavy congestion. This is especially true if you have many traffic sources, since many times the only way to catch problems is to send out more packets and see how many get through.
In short, although there’s a strong argument for using CAM over CAM, the real question is: “Should you be using CAM?” If you use NANO alone, or only if you have a large number of sources, then it’s an easy choice for you. However, if you need finer control over your network, then CPM might be the way to go. There are plenty of other things that you can use NANO for that can allow you to use both programs in tandem and will give you a comprehensive view of the traffic coming and going.