S
UMMIT
S
WITCH
I
NSTALLATION
AND
U
SER
G
UIDE
10-13
RMON
A
BOUT
RMON
RMON is the common abbreviation for the Remote Monitoring Management
Information Base (MIB) system deÞned by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
documents RFC 1271 and RFC 1757, which allows you to monitor LANs remotely.
A typical RMON setup consists of the following two components:
¥ RMON probe
Ñ An intelligent, remotely controlled device or software agent that
continually collects statistics about a LAN segment or VLAN. The probe transfers
the information to a management workstation on request, or when a predeÞned
threshold is crossed.
¥ Management workstation
Ñ Communicates with the RMON probe and collects the
statistics 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.
RMON F
EATURES
OF
THE
S
WITCH
The IETF deÞnes nine groups of Ethernet RMON statistics. The Summit supports the
following four of these groups:
¥
Statistics
¥
History
¥
Alarms
¥
Events
This section describes these groups, and discusses how they can be used.
S
TATISTICS
The RMON Ethernet Statistics group provides trafÞc and error statistics showing
packets, bytes, broadcasts, multicasts, and errors on a LAN segment or VLAN.
Information from the Statistics group is used to detect changes in trafÞc and error
patterns in critical areas of the network.
SUMMIT.BK Page 13 Thursday, September 25, 1997 12:33 PM