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5-22 C
HAPTER
5: A
DVANCED
M
ANAGEMENT
RMON
Using the RMON (Remote Monitoring) capabilities of
your Switch allows network administrators to
improve their efficiency and reduce the load on their
network.
The following sections explain more about the
RMON concept and the RMON features supported
by the Switch.
You can only use the RMON features of the Switch
if you have an RMON management application,
such as the RMON application supplied with
3Com’s Transcend Enterprise Manager.
What is RMON?
RMON is the common abbreviation for the Remote
Monitoring MIB (Management Information Base), a
system defined by the IETF documents RFC 1271
and RFC 1757, which allows you to monitor LANs
remotely.
A typical RMON setup consists of two components:
■
The RMON probe
— An intelligent,
remotely-controlled device or software agent
that continually collects statistics about a LAN
segment or VLAN, and transfers the information
to a management workstation on request or
when a pre-defined threshold is crossed.
■
The management workstation
— Communi-
cates with the RMON probe and collects the sta-
tistics from it. The workstation does not have to
be on the same network as the probe and can
manage the probe by in-band or out-of-band
connections.
About the RMON Groups
The IETF define nine groups of Ethernet RMON sta-
tistics. This section describes these groups, and
details how they can be used.
Statistics
The Statistics group provides traffic and error statis-
tics showing packets, bytes, broadcasts, multicasts
and errors on a LAN segment or VLAN.
Information from the Statistics group is used to
detect changes in traffic and error patterns in critical
areas of your network.
History
The History group provides historical views of net-
work performance by taking periodic samples of
the counters supplied by the Statistics group. The
group features user-defined sample intervals and
bucket counters for complete customization of trend
analysis.
The group is useful for analysis of traffic patterns
and trends on a LAN segment or VLAN, and to
establish baseline information indicating normal
operating parameters.
Alarms
The Alarms group provides a versatile, general
mechanism for setting thresholds and sampling
intervals to generate events on any RMON variable.