Network Management Systems

Remote monitoring can help in diagnosing networking problems, planning network performance, detecting security breaches, performing network maintenance all from any remote connection we choose. So I think the I.T. team should be given the opportunity to test this functionality out by taking a working vacation to Germany.

Remote Monitoring (RMON) is a network monitoring tool that enables network monitors and console systems to exchange network-monitoring data. RMON provides network administrators with more freedom in selecting network-monitoring probes and consoles with features that meet their particular networking needs. Many companies allow employees to work from home and they can monitor their system from any location in the world with a reliable internet connection. RMON carries data in nine or 10 groups, each providing specific sets of data to meet common network-monitoring requirements. Each group is optional so it can be customized to support all aspects of network management.

The various groups are: the statistics- group - offers low-level utilization and error statistics, the history group - provides trend analysis data based on the data from the statistics group, the alarm group - provides a means for the user to configure alarms, the event group - logs and generates traps for user-defined rising thresholds, falling thresholds, and matched packets, the host group - collects statistics based on MAC addresses, the top N Hosts group - collects host statistics for the busiest hosts, the packet capture group - controls packet capture, the traffic matrix group - collects and returns errors and utilization data, the filter group - collects information based on definable filters, the token-ring group - collects low-level token-ring statistics.

Rmon is just an extension that would add remote functionality to our current network management system. However as mentioned we could monitor and in some cases take action to prevent or fix issues from anywhere...