Enterprise network monitoring using open source software.

Popescu, Marian Marius ; Rosu, Sebastian Marius ; Sofron, Emil 等

1. INTRODUCTION

All organizations use today Internet or Internet technologies to attract, retain and cultivate relationships with customers, streamline supply-chain, manufacturing, procurement systems and automate corporate processes to deliver the right products and services to customers quickly and cost-effectively, also to capture, explore, analyze, and automate corporate processes information on customers and company operations in order to provide better business decisions (Rosu et al., 2008). In the 21st century, the enterprises continuous implement IT strategies & architectures to improve manufacture, research, products quality, sales, and services and to control costs. Today, the Internet is a worldwide conglomerate of different networks that communicate among each other via a common protocol, independently of the hardware type used. Various network services can be used by everyone, either supplying or demanding them. A large range of distribution, the platform independence, an big number of user friendly services that are easily accessible through the World Wide Web as well as the open standards used and free or budget-priced products (such as browsers, html editors, software updates) have lead to a high and continuously growing proliferation of the Internet (Szykman et al., 2001). The advantages offered by the Internet for covering the information needs are held to be the following (Dragoi et al., 2006): reduction of local barriers by means of world-wide information offers; reduction of time barriers by means of permanently available information; reduction of (transaction) costs by way of automation of information processing on the supply and/or the demand side; improved coordination and cooperation with external partners using an integrated information and communication platform (e.g. platform independence, information exchange without media ruptures).

2. ENTERPRISE NETWORK MANAGEMENT

The enterprises can development permanently project if have a good network management. Network management represents the activities, methods, procedures, and tools (software and hardware) that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems. IT Department has this role at the enterprise level (Rosu et al., 2009).

A solution proposed and implemented by us is to use a host and service monitor designed to inform as of network problems before your clients, end-users or managers do. A system and network monitoring application is Nagios[R]. We found and took this software from the Internet by download. This software is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation (GNU General Public License is a free, copy left license for software and other kinds of works). This gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify Nagios[R] under certain conditions.

Some of the Nagios[R] features include (www.nagios.org): monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING); monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, etc.) and monitoring of environmental factors such as temperature (see in figure 1 Nagios[R] traffic statistics); simple plug-in design that allows users to easily develop their own host and service checks and ability to define network host hierarchy, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that is unreachable; contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or other user-defined method); optional escalation of host and service notifications to different contact groups; ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution; support for implementing redundant and distributed monitoring servers; external command interface that allows on-the-fly modifications to be made to the monitoring and notification behavior through the use of event handlers, the web interface, and third-party applications; retention of host and service status across program restarts; scheduled downtime for suppressing host and service notifications during periods of planned outages and ability to acknowledge problems via the web interface; a Web interface--viewing current network status, notification and problem history. Simple authorization scheme that allows you restrict what users can see and do from the web interface. Also, Nagios[R] can do:

* The connections state verification by PING command at monitored equipments;

* The loops state verification by OSFP routing protocol state monitoring;

* For monitored equipments configurations does default intervals saves.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

We implement Nagios[R] to a large enterprise which has its headquarters in Bucharest and branch offices (agencies) in the country--in big cities but also in medium and small cities.

All enterprise locations have a local area network and communicate among themselves through a virtual private network. In each location were made two or three loops--one copper, one optical fibre or radio. To implement this application have used over a hundred locations.

In figure 2 are presented the locations monitored for this large enterprise--we eliminate the beneficiary name for advertising reason.

We realized more scripts as support for different operations. An example is CHECK OSPF. Using this script below (realized in PHP) we can monitor the OSPF Protocol status--generally used in locations that have at least 2 loops and prioritization is done by OSPF (if OSPF Protocol is upended for a provider loop monitoring system with loop UP).

<?php
unset($res_ospf);
$ip=$argv[2];
$comm=$argv[4];
$vec=$argv[6];
list($ip_v,$vecin)=explode(':',$vec);
$ip_v=trim($ip_v);$vecin=trim($vecin);
//echo "$ip\n$ip_v\n$comm \n$vecin \n\n";
exec(" snmpwalk -v 1 -c $comm $ip
.1.3.6.1.2.1.14.10.1.6.$ip_v.0 ",$res_ospf);
$car=trim(substr($res_ospf[0],strlen($res_ospf[0])-1));
if(!strncmp($res_ospfI0],'Time',3)){$car='0';}
if($car==='8'){
 echo "Link to $vecin is Up: Link OK ! \n";
}else{
 echo "Link to $vecin is DOWN !!!\n";
}
?>

3. CONCLUSION

A solution for an enterprise geographic dispersed network monitoring using open source software has been presented in this paper.

For an enterprise, network monitoring is a critical and very important function, which can save significant resources, increase network performance, employee productivity and maintenance cost of infrastructure.

This software (Nagios[R]) can be developed and implemented at a corporate level but also in a company that provides telecommunication services.

4. REFERENCES

Dragoi, G.; Cotet, C.; Rosu, L. & Rosu, S.M. (2006). Role of the virtual networks in the virtual enterprise. Strojniski Vestnik--Journal of Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 52, No. 7-8, pp. 526-531, ISSN 0039-2480

Rosu, S.M.; Dragoi, G.; Rosu, L. & Guran, M. (2008). Network management to support virtual teams work for project development at the enterprise level, Proceedings of ICMaS'2008, pp. 427-432, Romanian Academy Press, Bucharest, Romania, ISSN 1842-3183

Rosu, S.M.; Popescu, M.M. & Sofron, E. (2009). Corporate Network Management as Support for Virtual Teams Work, Proceedings of the 3th edition of the International Conference on Electronics, Computers and Artificial Intelligence--ECAI'2009, 3-5 July, Pitesti, Romania, No. 3, pp. 34-39, ISSN 1843-2115.

Szykman, S.; Fenves, S.J.; Keirouz, W. & Shooter, S.B. (2001). A foundation for interoperability in next-generation product development systems. Computer-Aided Design, No. 33, Elsevier, pp. 545-559, ISSN 0010-4485

*** http://www.nagios.org/, Accessed on: 2009-04-09