monitoring internet

[carl_townshend]

Hi all, people at my work are saying the internet is going down at midnight, is there any software where i can monitor the connection to the internet ?

[Craig Balfour]

There are probably various ways you can do this -especially if you are willing to use a dedicated network monitoring platform.

However, if you would like to just use a Cisco router consider using Cisco Service Assurance Agent (SAA) which allows you to monitor network performance by measuring key Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics such as response time, network resources, availability, jitter, connect time, packet loss and application performance.

Using SAA you can setup a "rtr" job on your router which at its simplest can check to see if a particular IP address (perhaps of your next hop or something else on the internet) is reachable, or you can do more complex stuff like measure the performance of the internet link.

For an example see http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&forum=Network%20Infrastructure&topic=WAN%2C%20Routing%20and%20Switching&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Dpass_through%26location%3Doutline%40%5E1%40%40.1dde1df5

Take a look at the Cisco SAA documentation at

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios120/120newft/120t/120t5/saaoper.htm

[guruprasadr]

HI Carl,

MRTG / Big Sister is the right tool the Monitor the Interface & Links.

MRTG: http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

Big Sister: http://bigsister.graeff.com/

Rate if Helps ! !

Best Regards,

Guru Prasad R

[avmabe]

I highly recommend you not to use MRTG.

http://www.cacti.net is the newer generation of MRTG that is based on RRD, which was written by the developer of MRTG.

Cacti has functionality to allow you to not only monitor and email you if something goes down, but will also provide you with graphs gathered from SNMP on the switches/routers on your network.

There are literally hundreds of ways to solve your issue but they all involve some sort of management and monitoring package... and ... don't spend any money, there are incredible open-source (free) solutions!