[AusNOG] How to monitor your shape?

[John Edwards]

I find smokeping to be an excellent way to monitor links where you don't have control of all the elements. The visual representation of latency shows a lot of subtle effects you wouldn't normally notice, or would find difficult to automate checks for. You can usually use it to spot otherwise invisible "problems" in external carrier networks such as SDH path changes, or diurnal congestion effects on aggregated links.

I'm looking forward to the ethernet OAM functionality promised in the NBNco network, which offers access seekers the ability to know exactly where faults are without calling someone or waiting for a perception-manicured outage notice. This is one area where they're showing some leadership in the industry, as I believe that this feature should trickle down into other wholesale networks and products once the expectation for such information is set.

When links are down, the Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) functionality on newer switches is another handy tool for troubleshooting - it lets you know how long the copper path is connected to your ethernet port. If it's showing 0 meters, or a missing pair, or the path is shorter than last time you checked - you can shortcut a lot of troubleshooting or remote-hands trial-and-error.

John


On 28/05/2011, at 11:41 AM, Don Gould wrote:

> What tools are people using to monitor links and check they're in shape 
> and let them know if they're bent?