• Network Management and Monitoring

• In computer networks, network management and monitoring

refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that
relate to the operation, administration, maintenance, and
provisioning of networked systems. Network management is
essential to command and control practices and is generally
carried out of a network operations center.
• Student should be able to describe what is Network
Management and Monitoring
What is network management?

• System & Service monitoring

– Reachability, availability
• Resource measurement/monitoring
– Capacity planning, availability
• Performance monitoring (RTT, throughput)
• Statistics & Accounting/Metering
• Fault Management (Intrusion Detection)
– Fault detection, troubleshooting, and tracking
– Ticketing systems, help desk
• Change management & configuration monitoring
Why network management?

• Make sure the network is up and running.

• Need to monitor it.
– Deliver projected SLAs (Service Level Agreements)
– Depends on policy
• What does your management expect?
• What do your users expect?
• What do your customers expect?
• What does the rest of the Internet expect?
• There's no such thing as 100% uptime
• Since you have switches that support SNMP…
• Use public domain tools to ping every switch and router in
your network and report that back to you
– Nagios http://nagios.org/
– Sysmon http://www.sysmon.org/
– Open NMS http://www.opennms.org/
• Goal is to know your network is having problems before the
users start calling.
• Know when to upgrade
– Is your bandwidth usage too high?
– Where is your traffic going?
– Do you need to get a faster line, or more providers?
– Is the equipment too old?
• Keep an audit trace of changes
– Record all changes
– Makes it easier to find cause of problems due to upgrades
and configuration changes
• Where to consolidate all these functions?
– In the Network Operation Center (NOC)
The Network Operations Center (NOC)

• Where it all happens

– Coordination of tasks
– Status of network and services
– Fielding of network-related incidents and complaints
– Where the tools reside (“NOC server”)
– Documentation including:
• Network diagrams
• Database/flat file of each port on each switch
• Network description
Documentation
• Basics, such as documenting your switches...
– What is each port connected to?
– Can be simple text file with one line for every port in a
switch:
• health-switch1, port 1, Room 29 – Director’s office
• health-switch1, port 2, Room 43 – Receptionist
• health-switch1, port 3, Room 100 – Classroom
• health-switch1, port 4, Room 105 – Professors Office
• …..
• health-switch1, port 25, uplink to health-backbone
• This information might be available to your network staff, help
desk staff, via a wiki, software interface, etc.
– Remember to label your ports!
Documentation:
Labeling
Documentation:
Software and Discovery
Documentation:
Diagrams
Documentation:
Diagramming Software
• Windows Diagramming Software
– Visio:
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/FX100487861033.aspx
– Ezdraw:
• http://www.edrawsoft.com/
• Cisco Packet Tracer 6.0.1 for Windows
– https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4CjGsNlfXWyRXUwSnNCT2pUT2M/
edit?pli=1

• Open Source Diagramming Software

– Dia: http://live.gnome.org/Dia
– Cisco reference icons
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html
– Nagios Exchange: http://www.nagiosexchange.org/
Network monitoring systems & tools

• Three kinds of tools

– Diagnostic tools – used to test connectivity, ascertain that
a location is reachable, or a device is up – usually active
tools
– Monitoring tools – tools running in the background
(”daemons” or services), which collect events, but can also
initiate their own probes (using diagnostic tools), and
recording the output, in a scheduled fashion.
– Performance tools – tell us how our network is handling
traffic flow.
Network monitoring systems & tools
• Active tools
– Ping – test connectivity to a host
– Traceroute – show path to a host
– MTR – combination of ping + traceroute
– SNMP collectors (polling)
• Passive tools
– log monitoring, SNMP trap receivers, NetFlow
• Automated tools
– SmokePing – record and graph latency to a set of hosts,
using ICMP (Ping) or other protocols
– MRTG/RRD – record and graph bandwidth usage on a
switch port or network link, at regular intervals
Network Management Protocols

• SNMP – Simple Network Management Protocol

– Industry standard, hundreds of tools exist to exploit it
– Present on any decent network equipment
• Network throughput, errors, CPU load, temperature, ...
– UNIX and Windows implement this as well
• Disk space, running processes, ...
• SSH and telnet
– It's also possible to use scripting to automate monitoring
of hosts and services
Statistics & accounting tools

• Traffic accounting and analysis

– What is your network used for, and how much
– Useful for Quality of Service, detecting abuses, and billing
(metering)
– Dedicated protocol: NetFlow
– Identify traffic ”flows”: protocol, source, destination, bytes
– Different tools exist to process the information
Fault & problem management

• Is the problem transient?

– Overload, temporary resource shortage
• Is the problem permanent?
– Equipment failure, link down
• How do you detect an error?
– Monitoring!
– Customer complaints
• A ticket system is essential
– Open ticket to track an event (planned or failure)
– Define dispatch/escalation rules
• Who handles the problem?
• Who gets it next if no one is available?
Ticketing systems

• Why are they important?

– Track all events, failures and issues
• Focal point for helpdesk communication
• Use it to track all communications
– Both internal and external
• Events originating from the outside:
– customer complaints
• Events originating from the inside:
– System outages (direct or indirect)
– Planned maintenance / upgrade – Remember to notify
your customers!
Ticketing systems

• Use ticket system to follow each case, including internal

communication between technicians
• Each case is assigned a case number
• Each case goes through a similar life cycle:
– New
– Open
– ...
– Resolved
– Closed
• RTT • SSH
• Troubleshooting • Telnet
• Ticketing systems, help desk
• Statistics & Accounting/Metering
• Service Level Agreements
• SNMP
• Active tools
• Passive tools
• Automated tools
• Why do we need network management
• Fault management
• Configuration management
• Accounting management
• Performance management
• Security management
• Give brief discretion about Network Management and

monitoring.

• Why we need documentation in Network Management.

• What are the advantages of using Ticketing systems for

Network Management.