SNMP Hub management tools

Tue Feb 9 18:31:57 UTC 1999

> Well, it has been some time since I posted this, and the responses have died
> down.  Here is a sumary of the responses.
> 
> They came in a couple of categories.
> 
> For management of hubs (port deactivation, etc), there were several responses
> that all essentially said that they script their own using the snmpwalk
> ucd-snmp packages, and that their solutions were not available for outside
> use.  
> 
> For statistics, several people (including myself) use mrtg
> (http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/mrtg.html)
It's amazing, but I saw a lot of people buying managed hubs only because 
_they are SNMP managable_ and no one of them really used SNMP to manage 
this devices. HP OV - brr, too expansive for middle-size networks and too 
huge.

Some companies sell lite manage tools for their hubs. But everything 
around looks like _big toys for the big boys_ -:). I am not sure if SNMP 
management is usefull for the HUB's and SWITCHes - every time we add some 
new switch (we never was so crazy to manage hubs) into SNMP monitor we 
found different kinds of software bugs in this hub preventing it from 
good management. Simple examples - Cisco Catalist 5000 - lost counters 
time to time; Cisco Catalist 1200 - no one know what does counters for 
FDDI mean; etc etc - looks like a very little people manage their hubs 
and switches by SNMP (except those ones from magazines who compare 10 
tools and choose the best one -:)).

May be I am misunderstanded, but it's my impression. 

PS. And MGRT is the best tool from noncommercial ones.
We use 'snmpstatd' + WWW interface to manege switches and hubs, btw.

> 
> Is there anyone out there that knows of managment toools that missed the first
> query?  It suprises me that managable hubs sell so well if the only tools to
> manage them are the Openview/Optivity solutions and whatever people cobble
> together themselves.  
> 
> Thanks to all that responded.
> 
> Matt
> 
> >> Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:30:24 MST
> > Since the System monitoring query had such good results, I am going to try a
> > variation.  I am looking for SNMP management tools (windows or Unix) that can
> > use multiple MIBS for an environment with hubs from several different vendors.
> > The tools need not be GUI, and I am espically interested in 'free' tools.  The
> > functionality I am looking for includes (but is not limitted to):
> > 
> > 	gathering port / board pps and bps information
> > 	port link status 
> > 	the ability to determine what port an IP addresses / MAC addreses is
> > 		connected to
> > 	enable / disable ports 
> > 	reset hub / hub management 
> > 
> > Don't bother reporting on Openview and Optivity...I know about those :-) 
> > 
> > Please send responses to me personally (with URLS or other appropriate
> > pointers) and I will digest / sumarize them and send them to the list.
> > 
> > 			Matt
> 
> 

Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow
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