Airplane777
join:2004-06-20
edit:
December 31st, @12:46AM
| WISP monitoring...general programs ?
As a WISP grows, I understand a WISP operator should consider deploying certain types of management/monitoring programs.
Without initially getting too specific about program names, can you tell me in general what programs I might need to deploy...as my WISP gets larger?
I will kind of guess here to give you an idea of what I'm looking for...
I figure I might need programs for:
1. Statistics bandwidth monitoring to monitor the BW used by each of my customers and the BW used by the whole system. I would need this "stats" data, in order to know if I need to order more BW capacity. And the individual stats will tell me who is the BW hog.
2. Alarm monitoring...to tell me if I lose an AP, a CPE, or router, etc. Maybe this program will call my cell phone or page me in some way if an outage occures.
Are these two general types of monitoring the only type of monitoring I might need to do?
Once I get the general types of monitoring figured out, then I'll "home in" on what the exact programs are that will let me do the monitoring that I need to do.
For instance...I understand that PRTG and MRTG are very good "stats" monitoring programs. I'll probably give them strong consideration.
But I'm not sure what program to use that will let me do alarm monitoring...so that I can find out right away when a piece of my equipment fails. I'd like to know, before a customer even calls me to report an outage.
Thanks for any info on this. |
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Rhaas
join:2005-12-19
Bernie, MO
| Re: WISP management...general programs ?
cacti | 
nagios |
1. I use cacti and cricket, I think for the most part Cacti will be easier to setup for setup simple results as it already has some templates as default. I still use cricket because there are a few scripts that I have written that I have yet to port into Cacti. MRTG (I am a *nix only shop so no experience with prtg) and Cricket are pretty close together as far as functionality, I jsut like the config of Cricket better than MRTG.
2. I use nagios and I plan on integrating it with Asterisk so that it has the capability to dial-out. Big-Brother, Big-Sister and HP-Openview are also monitoring\altert programs. |
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canadiancree
Crusin in the boonies
join:2004-02-10
Belleville, ON
 ·Bell Sympatico
 ·Cogeco Cable
| Regarding HP-Openview, as someone that used to use it a lot (for HP's Canadian network no less), I foudn it to be extremely useful and robust. However, unless your WISP is on par with the Bell's and Roger's of the world (or for our American readers, the AT&T's and Verison's of the world), the cost of the software would put it out of reach of most of us here.
Granted my cost info is at least a year old, but I doubt they've put it on sale anytime soon. |
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Keithb
join:2003-09-16
El Campo, TX | As well as PRTG Traffic Grapher, Paessler also offer IP Check monitor that will send SMS alerts to your cell phones, etc. I haven't used it, so I can't say how good it works but not a bad price. |
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vincentfox
join:2003-03-18
Davis, CA
| reply to Airplane777
Re: WISP monitoring...general programs ?
For monitoring, nothing beats Nagios. Open Source and lots of plugins. The initial learning curve is a bit steep, but after some initial setup work you just keep adding new hosts and checking new functions. I've recently added to mine, having it monitor processes on the remote AP's and routers. I get an email about a problem and if the phone rings I already know what it's about, sometimes it's already fixed. |
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Airplane777
join:2004-06-20 | Does Nagios also do BW stats? |
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vincentfox
join:2003-03-18
Davis, CA | reply to Airplane777
Nagios is for health-monitoring many aspects of a network and the hosts on it. I don't believe it has anything for traffic graphing that is the domain of other software like MRTG, Cacti, etc. |
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gpilot
join:2006-04-29
Napa, CA | Lets not forget the DUDE. We found this to be great software and freeware also.
its on the Mikrotik website. |
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jbunyea
Premium
join:2002-08-23
Kerrville, TX | Nagios based...
»www.groundworkopensource.com/pro···iew.html |
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j2sw
join:2006-05-02
Williamsport, IN | reply to Airplane777
Cacti, Dude from Mikrotik, Nagios, and Look@Lan. All good ones. Look@Lan only runs on windows though.
Justin |
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superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
 ·WaveCrazy.Net
| We use Big Brother ( »bb4.com/ ). You can set it up to page You or text Your phone for just about any situation You can think of when it comes to hardware issues. It will also monitor Your servers and watch for full disks, bad disks etc. We also use MRTG to monitor most of our backbones. The Big Brother server should be offsite though, so if Your back bone goes down, it can still get out to send messages etc.
--
»www.wavecrazy.net Join WISPA today! »www.wispa.org/ |
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j2sw
join:2006-05-02
Williamsport, IN | I remember big brother years ago. Then they went crazy on what was considered a free license, what was not, etc. Now you have to e-mail them for a quote. I hate that.
Justin |
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Airplane777
join:2004-06-20
edit:
January 25th, @12:36AM
| reply to superdog
Sounds like Big Brother has a lot of alarm monitoring capability.
Do I understand correctly, that Big Brother uses some kind of server to do this hardware monitoring you mentioned? Is it some kind of pinging program thats placed on a server?
When you say offsite, do you mean I can have the Big Brother server located at our office, using one ISP connection. While my WISP system that I want Big Brother to monitor for hardware problems, is located elsewhere, and is connected to a completely different backbone to the Internet?
For BW consumption monitoring of your different clients,is that what you use MRTG for?
As my little WISP system gets larger, I'm going to have to be able to do some kind of alarm monitoring and also BW consumption stats gathering. I had another guy walk into our office today, and tell me when I get my WISP signal in his neighborhood, he'll buy Internet service from me. I can't wait to get more APs up on a tall hill somewhere, so I can serve a very large area. Then I'll really get a bunch more customers. Which means, that I will need to get monitoring software such as you mentioned here. |
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wifimaker
join:2006-04-29
Austin, TX
moderated:
January 25th, @06:51AM
| reply to Airplane777
post was removed as spamming or self promotion of products is not allowed.  |
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jdmarti1
Jack
join:2004-06-15
Oilton, OK | Big Sister is an open source play on Big Brother.
»bigsister.graeff.com/
--
»magicwisp.com |
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superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
·WaveCrazy.Net
| Jack, That looks like a really cool setup!. Although it appears to me more server oriented(Watching CPU cycles, disk sizes etc.)?, I am sure it would work well for WISP?. Do You use it? 
--
»www.wavecrazy.net Join WISPA today! »www.wispa.org/ |
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jdmarti1
Jack
join:2004-06-15
Oilton, OK
| I don't use it - I was investigating it when Big Brother went wacko on their licensing. Basically it was able to do anything that BB did, you just have to configure it. I am using Dude, but am looking at other options - I just need time to configure something. Why can't we get 28 hrs in a day?
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»magicwisp.com |
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gunther_01
join:2004-03-29
Saybrook, IL
| said by jdmarti1  : Why can't we get 28 hrs in a day? I am sure if everybody in the US complained enough, our government could change that for you ASAP. /rant--Couldn't resist |
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