monitoring the cisco network please help

[Gwiz00]

Hello

We have a small network, a few cisco routers and switches and i have to set up a monitoring system, to efficiently manage our bandwidth...unfortunately i don't have a lot of knowledge in monitoring a network and i am asking for your help.
So, i want to set up a monitoring system with which i can see the bandwidth utilization on each interface, to see how much traffic a client makes, let's say in one month, and if a client calls and says he is not getting the bandwidth, he should, i should tell him to make a bandwidth test and i should be able to see somehow...how much traffic is he making in that moment.
I know i have to use SNMP.Can anyone please recommend good books/materials/links on snmp.As i understand it, the routers and switches would be snmp agents and me from a remote workstation i can make a snmp get to see the statistics.Can i do what what i wrote with SNMP? If not what should i use?What software solution should i use?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time

 

[pmoorey]

Hi,

My advice is to enable Netflow on your Cisco routers and switches, I'm not sure of the IOS and hardware requirements.

There are a number of different software packages that track netflow info and present it in a lovely graphical format.

The command is interface > IP route cache

config > ip flow-export destination xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 9996

Then install your Netflow tracking software on a box.

Alternatively install NTOP on a PC!

HTH


Peter
CCNA, Cisco Qualified Specialist

 

[chipk]

MRTG is free, easy, and gives you just what you're looking for. It uses SNMP.

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

 

[Gwiz00]

Hi,

First off all thank you very much for the info.

What is the difference between netflow and snmp?

Best regards,

G

 

[chipk]

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6601/products_ios_protocol_group_home.html

Netflow gives you a lot of specific information about traffic, accounting, security, and a bunch of other stuff.

SNMP is a more general protocol, part of TCP/IP, with which you can query properties of any network device with SNMP enabled, and also send trap messages to management stations. You can get most of the same information, but Cisco Netflow is much more Cisco-centric (which also means you're going to pay big $$$ for most applications that use/interpret it)

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/snmp.htm