Michael McNamara

Network Management

What happens after you build and install that shinny new Cisco or Nortel network? That's generally when the real fun begins... how to manage and monitor a network infrastructure that is growing ever so complicated with applications such as VoIP and security initiatives such as EAP (802.1x).

I've used HP Open View Network Node Manager for the past 10 years and have been fairly happy with it. Network Node Manager is an immense product that can do amazing things but it can be a bit overwhelming at times and often it can be just too big of a cannon to swat a fly. I'm a really big fan of the Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) by Tobi Oetiker along with RRDTool and 14all.cgi.

I've written a lot of custom scripts for MRTG and I've tailored the CGI script 14all.cgi for my employer's Intranet site. Theuse of 14all.cgi allows me to place the data directly onto my employer's Intranet site allowing support personnel to access the performance data directly from that site without having to log into yet another management system.

I've also written a few management applications to fill in where some vendors fell short. A perfect example is Motorola's WS5100 Wireless LAN Switch. Until the recent release of their Wi-NG (3.x) software their management console on their legacy 2.x software was an abysmal Java based application that often locked up, requiring you to restart your web browser. I needed someway of allowing our Help Desk personnel and Field Engineers of quickly checking the status of the WS5100 to see which wireless devices were connected and which if any, Access Ports (wireless radios) where down and/or offline. It would easily take someone with a decent machine 5 - 10 minutes to fire up the Java management application, login and gather the necessary information. Thankfully Motorola (formerly Symbol Technologies) built a very thorough SNMP MIB around their product. I was able to write a web based Perl application that could query the WS5100 in under 20 seconds. I've posted that code if anyone's interested under the Perl section (you can jump straight to the Perl code here).

SNMP MIBS
I've taken the liberty of uploading some of the vendor specific SNMP MIBS that I work with from day to day. It would seem that there are a great many people looking for these (and other) SNMP MIBS with tools like Google and Yahoo. I know I've personally spent hours on end searching for some MIBS and while the vendors have gotten much better at making them available there is still room for improvement.

Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 (v4.1.4)
Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 1600 (v2.1.4)
Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Series (v5.1)
Nortel Ethernet Switch 460/470 (v3.7)
Motorola WS5100 Wireless LAN Switch (v3.0.3)
Motorola WS5000/WS5100 Wireless LAN Switch (v2.1.3)
Motorola RFS7000 Wireless LAN Switch (v1.x)
APC UPS Management Cards (v387)
Polycom VSX8000 Video Conference Unit
Blue Coat ProxySG Appliance (v4.2.6.1)
Blue Coat ProxyAV Appliance (v3.1.3.7)
Nortel Application Switch (v23.2.3.1)

Nortel VPN Router v7.05.300 *NEW*

Nortel Succession 4.5 (includes TRAPS)

Unfortunately I only have a limited amount of disk space so I must post these files compressed. I believe some are just standard zip format while a few might be using the bzip2 format. I personally use WinRAR on my Windows XP desktop and it can handle both formats.

Last Updated: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 06:04 PM