Monitoring a Closed Circuit

[NWChowd]

Hi All,

First, I am not a network admin, and have only a general knowledge of routers and router technology.
Now, I have been asked by management to begin monitoring uptime/downtime between our Cisco 1601R Router and our Application Service Provider (ASP) in Alabama. The connection is between two routers (ours internally and a router in Alabama). The connection is a closed-circuit connection.

My question is: how the heck do I monitor this connection for uptime/downtime? are there tools out there?


any direction is greatly appreciated.


Thanks,
Dennis

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"I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind."
-David Ricardo, classical economist
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[lgarner]

There are many things available. A couple of my favorite free ones are:

NMIS (

http://www.sins.com.au/nmis/)

Nagios (

http://www.nagios.org)

and anything based on RRDTool (

http://www.rrdtool.org)

or MRTG (

http://www.mrtg.org)

 

[NWChowd]

Ok, I'm attempting to install/configure the MRTG product. what is a community string (name) for a router? How do I figure that out. I have no documentation on the router.

any ideas?

thanks so much!!
DMill

======================================
"I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind."
-David Ricardo, classical economist
======================================

 

[lgarner]

community string" is a password. Routers don't have snmp enabled by default. Look for lines like this on the router:

snmp-server community xv87EpY RO
snmp-server community a89vmqR RW
snmp-server trap-source Loopback0
snmp-server location Main Office
snmp-server contact Support (555) 555-1212
snmp-server host 10.1.1.5 xv87EpY

Either the RO (Read-Only) or RW (Read-Write) string will work for MRTG. Ensure that the address of the computer running MRTG is listed as an "snmp-server host".

If snmp isn't configured, then just get into the router and set it up:

Router> enable
<enter enable password>
Router# config terminal
Router (config)# snmp-serv comm abcdefg ...
... and so on ...
Router (config)# exit
Router# exit