Tools and Resources
From NANOG
This is a list of tools or references useful to operators, many of which are answers to recurring questions on the mailing list. This page focuses on open-source applications because most of the larger providers have built their toolset around open-source tools. There are some commercial tools, however due to the small market size and limited ability to make one size fit all, they do not dominate the field.
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Network monitoring
Freeware applications are a popular option. These applications are used in big and small companies and many networks striving for five nines/six sigma reliability utilize them as well. We can't address all of the tools available so we've chose some of the most popular for your review. All are highly customizable and their source is freely available.
- MRTG - A statistics collector and analyzer
- RRDTool - Timeseries data store and graphing engine. Used in almost all network moniting tools.
- SmokePing - Latency measurement tool with alerts, beautiful graphs and measurement plugins.
- CRICKET - A system for monitoring trends in time-series data. Cricket was developed to help network managers visualize and understand the traffic on their networks.
- NAGIOS - Host, service, and network monitoring
- SNIPS - system and network monitoring software
- Cacti - Statistics collecter and analyzer using rrdtool in the background
- NMIS - Network Management Information System
- COSI-NMS - Cisco-centric Open Source tools
- NFSEN Netflow Tool
There are also commercial products available which include Netcool, HP OpenView, What's Up Gold, LogALot, and others.
Device management
- Rancid - monitors and archives network devices' configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc). Provides parallelized configuration changes. tcl/expect based.
- RTR - monitors and archives cisco device configurations. Provides serial configuration changes. perl based. Generally superceeded by RANCID. need a link -- might only be historical at this point
- DIS - Device Interaction Suite - Perl OO based network automation tool, includes scripts to do periodic config downloads, push mass parallel config changes and code upgrades.
There are commercial products available and while some are multi-pltform (Intelliden, etc) most are vendor- or platform-specific (ie, ciscoworks).
IP management
IP address management is an important function of any organization, whether you are managing PI or PA address space or just internal use of "private" RFC 1918 space. Managing RFC 1918 space is important to avoid collisions, provide operational clarity, and to have proper documentation. Some RIR's consider RFC 1918 address when assessing an ISP or end-user application for address space.
You should determine how much automation you actually need before extending your resources. Excel spreadsheets, CVS repositories, or other existing tools used by your organization work quite well for operators and enterprises alike.
IP address management software
IPAT, the IP Allocation Tool is based on the original RIPE registry software; it enables you to manage your IPV4 and IPV6 space efficiently by adding modifications to the RIPE registry software. Custom scripts allow for automatic assignment selection based on different criteria like location, node or type of usage and provide IP space usage data as well as automatically synchronizing with RIR databases like APNIC and RIPE. IPAT is open source!
Another popular open source tool for scaling address management is NorthStar.
