In a gunfight, it's not a fair fight if one side is blindfolded. Unfortunately, unless a technician has the ability to read and analyze network traffic, packet by packet, the technician is essentially blind. Let's look at a simple, server-based problem. A NetWare server is slowing down. Users can't log on.
More hardware is the normal answer.
A network monitor, Novell's Lanalyzer for example, will show if a server overload condition exists. Not so fast. Well now, that's different. We can diddle with the Novell set commands-directory caching, percent of disk used for directory, etc. What was happening was the application, a stock quote system used by a major money manager, created numerous temporary files.