[c-nsp] Network Management

[Venu Gopal]

Hi all,

I have been working on Network Management since few years!
Over the period I've learned certain things that include :
1. Syslog
2. SNMP
3. Netflow
4. AAA (TACACS+)
5. Network Discovery Techniques (CDP, UDP & ICMP scanning...)

Based on this experience I've developed few in house applications
for network monitoring using Syslog, SNMP Traps and CDP.
For Netflow we are using Nfcapd/Nfsen ( developed by Peter Haag)

Its quite painful and laborious to develop these applications from
scratch and especially when you don't have a dedicated team to do
this. Prior to this I did try to see for open source alternatives but
now I decided to go with in house development.

Since I've see a couple of discussions here on Network Management,
thought I would take some suggestions from you guys. I would
appreciate if you can share some ideas of what you are looking for
in a typical Network Monitoring application. I hope many of you
must have tried lots of open source tools and have some valuable
suggestions on various aspects that include:

1. Ease of installation
2. Platform and programming language(s)
3. Features and Extensions
4. Architecture (centralized/distributed)
5. User front-end (GUI/Web)

Your inputs will help me in building a comprehensive Network Monitoring
application. So far I've been using C++, Mysql and PHP.

Cheers,
Venu