RE: [nv-l] Netview Traps - Time to post

["Key, Chris" <Chris.Key@hq.doe.gov>]

Scott,

When using SNMP to poll, and the SNMP address interface is the one that is down, will the other interfaces on the Router show Unreachable, or will all interfaces on the Router show critical?

I am in a environment where we can only ping certain interfaces as well, and agree that SNMP is a much cleaner way of managing these issues, but I am concerned at how clearly a problem is isolated if the SNMP address interface is down.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Barr, Scott [mailto:Scott_Barr@csgsystems.com]
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 8:37 AM
To: nv-l@lists.tivoli.com
Subject: RE: [nv-l] Netview Traps - Time to post

Expense can be measured in many ways.

The problem is having to keep track of which interfaces need to be up and managed and which ones are not reachable/pingable. I know of several situations where pinging just doesn't get the job done. Why use a management platform that only manages a subset of important resources? In our environment many, many interfaces are not reachable by pings since we are the center of a "hub" of client networks. Its just a nightmare, and I speak from help desk experience, to know what should be up and what should unmanaged. There are several ways to control the amount of SNMP data and lets be realistic and suggest that most networks now are not suffering from bandwidth restrictions they were a few years ago. (Yes, some obviously will be).

If you want monitoring groups to be 100% autonomous from having to ask which links should be reachable/up and which are unmanaged/unreachable, SNMP fills the bill much better and will ultimately reduce the cost of managing an enterprise.

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd H.
To: Barr, Scott
Cc: nv-l@lists.tivoli.com
Sent: 5/16/02 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [nv-l] Netview Traps - Time to post

"Barr, Scott" <Scott_Barr@csgsystems.com> writes:

> SNMP status polling is set automatically for any router with
un-numbered
> serial interfaces OR it is coded in the seedfile:
>
> routername
> $routername
>
> The dollar sign forces the previous entry to use SNMP status polling.
You
> will probably have to delete and re-discover the node. I highly
recommend
> SNMP status polling whereever possible on the basis that it is FAR
less work
> to manage interfaces since you don't have to ping all of them (or
unmanage
> them).

On the other hand, as James has said, network bandwidth wise, isn't
ICMP pinging cheaper?  

An ICMP echo and ICMP echo-reply pair are pretty tiny in comparison to
individual SNMP GET requests.  IIRC NetView isn't particularly
efficient at aggregating GET's.

--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

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