router upkeep

[twism]

hello all,

i was wondering what do i need to maintain my cisco router, switch, pix network.

besides seeing that the line/protocols are up ..what else can i do that normal JR cisco admins to on a network...

thank you

 

[lanbrown]

Look at the logs and the statistics on the interfaces.

 

[robbieguy2003]

Get something that will log MRTG data into graphs for you.

http://www.cacti.net/

is pretty good. You get an idea of what traffic your doing and if something suddenly bursts to 100Mb/s when it normally does 10Kb/s you know to check it out

It might also be worth getting some network monitoring software like WhatsUpGold (

http://www.ipswitch.com).

This can monitor IP addresses by pinging them every minute. It can even check services like Mail, Web, Database etc.

All these lights and graphs will allow you to see if theres a problem hopefully before users do. This will help you resolve problems quicker and keep your users happy!

HTH

I wish someone would just call me Sir, without adding 'Your making a scene'.

Rob

 

[lgarner]

MRTG is a tool for graphing SNMP (and other) data. Cacti is a frontend for RRDTool, which is a more efficient and flexible method for doing the same thing. I use and like Cacti.

Specifically for routers, I use NMIS which ties performance and error graphs, thresholds, and log monitoring into one interface.

Routers normally don't need any maintenance. I've had some running for 3 years or so. You do want something to let you know if memory use or errors are increasing.