3Com 9100 Events, Improving Efficiency, Allowing Proactive Management, Reducing the Traffic Load

RMON 121

Events

The Events group creates entries in an event log and/or sends SNMP traps to the management workstation. An event is triggered by an RMON alarm. The action taken can be configured to ignore it, to log the event, to send an SNMP trap to the receivers listed in the trap receiver table, or to both log and send a trap. The RMON traps are defined in RFC 1757 for rising and falling thresholds.

Effective use of the Events group saves you time. Rather than having to watch real-time graphs for important occurrences, you can depend on the Event group for notification. Through the SNMP traps, events can trigger other actions, providing a mechanism for an automated response to certain occurrences.

Benefits of RMON Using the RMON features of your switch has the following three main advantages:

■It improves network monitoring efficiency.

■It allows you to manage the network in a more proactive manner.

■It reduces the load on the network and the management workstation.

Improving Efficiency

Using RMON probes allows you to remain at one workstation and collect information from widely dispersed LAN segments or VLANs. This means that the time taken to reach a problem site, set up equipment, and begin collecting information is largely eliminated.

Allowing Proactive Management

If they are configured correctly, RMON probes deliver information before problems occur. This means that you can take action before problems impact users. In addition, probes record the behavior of your network, so that you can analyze the causes of problems.

Reducing the Traffic Load

Traditional network management involves a management workstation polling network devices at regular intervals to gather statistics and identify problems or trends. As network sizes grow and traffic levels increase, this approach places a strain on the management workstation and also generates large amounts of traffic.