donnelly@mergvax (Mark Donnelly) (02/02/89)
Hello, Looking for recommendations concerning Ethernet monitoring software. The need: Overall Statistics - % utilization - # of collisions Individual Node Statistics - # of packets generated - # of errors - # of retransmissions Basicly I am looking for something to give a good picture of the net at a particular time and a given time interval. There are most likely other statistics I should be looking at, and if you could point me in the right direction I would appreicate it. To save some dollars on hardware I need it to run on a PC-AT or similar machine with a vanilla ethernet card. Any comments or directions even constructive flames would be appreicated. Thanks, Mark uunet!philabs!mergvax!donnelly
jbvb@ftp.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (02/09/89)
In article <3649@mergvax>, donnelly@mergvax (Mark Donnelly) writes: > Looking for recommendations concerning Ethernet monitoring software. > The need: Overall Statistics > - % utilization > - # of collisions > > Individual Node Statistics > - # of packets generated > - # of errors > - # of retransmissions > Basicly I am looking for something to give a good picture of the > net at a particular time and a given time interval.... What you are talking about is quite a lot of work for an AT and a standard PC Ethernet interface. For one thing, none of the standard interfaces I've worked with can handle packets as close together as some Unix boxes send them so you won't get them *all*. For another, the only way you can get some of the numbers you want is by asking all the hosts. There are two classes of network monitoring/management software that run on ATs with standard network interfaces: 1. Promiscuous-mode monitors that display all packets on the net (some will save to disk, or only accept packets that match some filter you specify interactively). These include our "LANWatch" (commercial), "Netwatch" from the MIT/CMU/Harvard PC-IP public-domain package, and a Wollongong product I've not seen literature for (I'm told it is based on Netwatch). 2. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) network management station software, which can query gateways (some) and hosts (very few, as of yet) that contain SNMP "agents" for statistics and configuration, and change some values remotely. The only thing I know of actually on the market is Proteon's "Overview", but the MIT and CMU public-domain libraries announced a few weeks ago may contain some useful applications, if you have a TCP/IP "sockets" development environment on your PC. The monitors are better at diagnosing networks that don't work at all (although some hardware-based monitors will do even better, because they can see more cable problems), and SNMP can collect more statistics as long as the network is at least partly functional. The monitors need to be attached to the network being diagnosed, the SNMP management can be done from elsewhere (e.g. via IP routers and different media). The monitors can detect more kinds of problems, and works with protocols other than TCP/IP, but you need to understand the protocols in use. SNMP presents you with much simpler counts and variables you can examine or set, but you may need the remote system's source code to understand *exactly* what they are counting, or controlling, and they are only TCP/IP-related. -- James B. VanBokkelen We're moving. After 2/26, the new number FTP Software Inc. will be (617) 246-0900.