Network monitoring tools
Mark R. Ludwig
both wins and losses. I have $0 to spend, so vendors need not reply
(sorry). Our environment is one Ethernet with several Unix boxes
(from different vendors--Apollo/HP, DEC/VAX, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun, SGI),
all talking IP, and several PCs networked with Microsoft LAN Manager
(which talk NetBEUI?). The ideal tool would recognize both types of
packets, and display using X11 so no matter which host runs it, the
display can be on any host.
Given the name of a tool I can probably scare it up via the usual
source acquisition techniques, but if you _happen_ to know a good place
from which to snarf it, such information would be useful.
Thanks in advance! Please reply directly. I will summarize on request.$$
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Mark R. Ludwig
I would like recommendations for Unix-based network monitoring tools,
both wins and losses. I have $0 to spend, so vendors need not reply
(sorry). Our environment is one Ethernet with several Unix boxes
(from different vendors--Apollo/HP, DEC/VAX, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun, SGI),
all talking IP, and several PCs networked with Microsoft LAN Manager
(which talk NetBEUI?). The ideal tool would recognize both types of
packets, and display using X11 so no matter which host runs it, the
display can be on any host.
Given the name of a tool I can probably scare it up via the usual
source acquisition techniques, but if you _happen_ to know a good place
from which to snarf it, such information would be useful.
Thanks in advance! Please reply directly. I will summarize on request.$$
To which I received several responses (more summary requests than
information). There are some tools which work with/under/above SNMP,
which might be interesting if I understood SNMP.
For what I want to do, the most interesting tool is NNStat, which I am
in the process of customizing. (If anyone has any hints about how to
invoke statspy and how to get rspy to communicate with a running
statspy, I'd appreciate the information. Both Sun-4 and Ultrix act
the same -- Acquired 0 packets -- which lead me to believe that I'm
invoking statspy incorrectly.)
The second-most interesting is xtr (X TRaffic), which is nice for
snapshot viewing of IP traffic. Because I am also interested in the
LAN Man traffic, its usefulness is limited.
I have edited the replies to remove signatures and inserted quotations
from my post.
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From: hen...@oar.net
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 07:45:55 -0500
I've got a NMS which does some of what you describe (it only does IP
and not the LAN Manager stuff). It runs under X, and shows the status
of the network. Its available via anonymous ftp from
thor.oar.net:/pub/xnetdb-v2.10.tar.Z.
I've enclosed the summary paragraph from the man page...
HC
========
Xnetdb is a network monitoring tool based on X Windows and
SNMP which also has integrated database and statistic view-
ing capabilities. Xnetdb will determine and display the
status of routers and circuits it has been told to monitor
by querying the designated sites and displaying the result.
Additionally, it also has integrated database functionality
in that it can display additional information about a site
or circuit such as the equipment at the site, the contact
person(s) for the site, and other useful information.
Finally it can gather designated statistical information
about a circuit or router and display it on demand.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Paul A. Ebersman" <eber...@uunet.uu.net>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 08:13:10 -0500
The basic answer is that there is nothing in the public domain. There
are very basic SNMP packages (CMU and MIT), but they are really
libraries, not PD applications. There is the beholder stuff, but it
runs on PC's only and doesn't have an X interface. Monet was an attempt
to do something, but it wasn't anywhere near beta quality the last time
I looked (3 months ago).
If you do get responses, please either post a summary or email me a copy.
I have been living with the CMU SNMP package and perl scripts that don't
do everything I want and have no X display.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bill Silvert <sil...@biome.bio.ns.ca>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 09:49:48 -0400
I'd like to hear what you find out. I have a program called netvis for
SGI's only which you can ftp from biome.bio.ns.ca in pub/sgi.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kevin Meek <km...@cti.com>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:10 EST
Consider this a request to summarize! I could use this type of tool as well.
Thanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: tom...@cs.utexas.edu
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:52:04 CST
Please do post a summary of what you get or forward a copy to me if
you decide not to post.
Thanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:58:40 -0800
From: John Pochmara <poch...@bogart.cse.ogi.edu>
I know of two tools that do network monitoring that
are free. One is called NNStat the other is 'xtr'.
NNStat is for long term network monitoring. NNStat
will tell you things like % of traffic that is IP, TCP, <whatever>.
Can be for any time interval, hour, day, week, etc.
Plus lots of other stuff. NNStat is not meant to be interactive.
xtr on the other hand is a interactive network monitor.
But it can only really monitor tcp/ip traffic and
you have to have at least one Sun. xtr uses Sun's
etherd daemon (thats why you need the Sun). xtr itself
has been tested on Sun 4 & 3 under SunOS 4.X,
DECStations 2100 and 5100 under Ultrix 4.1 & 4.2 .
xtr is X based too.
You can get xtr from uunet in the comp.sources.x archive.
One note: The Imakefile in xtr is bad, use the supplied Makefile.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 16:56:58 -0500
From: Chris Siebenmann <c...@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>
I'm not aware of any X-based monitoring tools. However, tty-based
tools are fairly common; there's tcpdump, nfswatch, and NNStat at
least.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 19:08:47 EST
From: "Fuat C. Baran" <fu...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Take a look at RFC1147:
1147 Stine, R.H.,ed. FYI on a network management tool catalog: Tools for
monitoring and debugging TCP/IP internets and interconnected devices.
1990 April; 126 p. (Format: TXT=336906, PS=555225 bytes) (Also FYI 2)
Let me know if you don't know how to acquire RFCs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 22:19:21 -0500
From: Ace Stewart <jste...@zookeeper.cns.syr.edu>
In article <1991Oct30....@uai.com> you write:
...will summarize
Please do -- this is something that I am _very_ interested in.
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Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 09:59:54 EST
From: "Dane P. Kottke" <dko...@ele.uri.EDU>
Hi,
I read your request concerning ethernet monitoring programs.
I don't know of any either, but would be interested in
any information you might learn.
Thanks
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Date: Tue, 5 Nov 91 13:14:35 EST
From: "Colin Moneypenny" <cmon...@dh.boeing.com>
I would be interested in anyhing u find.
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Date: Tue, 5 Nov 91 15:23:40 -0500
From: Hong Chen <hc...@cs.scarolina.edu>
please forward me any info you got. Thank you very much.
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USPS: 3625 Del Amo Boulevard, Suite 370, Torrance, CA 90503
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