Category: CCDA Study Guide

The CiscoWorks Routed WAN Management Solution (RWAN) is a suite of applications meant to help administrators configure, manage, and troubleshoot routed WANs. The suite is used for functions like identifying performance bottlenecks, utilization on WAN links, and so forth. Beside the two core applications listed below, this suite also includes CiscoWorks Resource Manager Essentials, which was looked at in the CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution section.

• CiscoWorks Access Control List Manager. This application works in conjunction with Resource Manager Essentials and provides a web-based graphical interface to manage access lists on Cisco routers.

• CiscoWorks Internetwork Performance Monitor. This application provides network response time and availability information, allowing engineers to diagnose network performance issues using a combination of real-time and historical data.

The CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS) is a suite of applications aimed at maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting LAN environments, especially those based on Cisco’s AVVID architecture. The suite is made up of the core applications listed below, along with Device Fault Manager, which was looked at in the previous section.

• Cisco nGenius Real Time Monitor. This application provides a multi-user web-accessible interface to network RMON data collected by switches in Cisco’s Catalyst line.

• CiscoWorks Campus Manager. This application is used to administer, monitor, and configure Cisco Catalyst Layer 2 switching on campus networks. The tool provides information about both the logical and physical layouts of the network, which can become unwieldy in large, complex environments.

• CiscoWorks Resource Manager Essentials. This is a suite of applications used to manage the configuration of Cisco switches, routers, and access servers, as well as handle inventory management of Cisco devices. For example, this suite includes utilities to manage software images, audit changes, and device configurations.

The CiscoWorks product line is just that – not a single product, but rather a suite of many different network management products based on Internet standards. These products are bundled into common network management “solutions”, typically targeted at enterprise organizations. While the current version runs from a web-based platform, past versions have been provided as applications for both Windows NT and UNIX. Products in the line can be installed in a stand-alone fashion, or integrated with other third-party NMSs. Some of the more popular CiscoWorks bundles are described below. All of the CiscoWorks “bundles” also include CiscoView, which was described in the previous section. It’s worth noting that besides being integrated with CiscoWorks, CiscoView can also be integrated into other NMS platforms such as HP OpenView.

CiscoWorks for Windows is also part of the CiscoWorks product line, but is specifically a suite of applications designed to help simplify the administration and maintenance of small to medium sized networks using Cisco equipment. The suite includes a variety of applications that provide the ability to configure, manage, and monitor Cisco network devices, while providing extensive reporting capabilities.

CiscoWorks for Windows is SNMP-based, and was recently released in a new, web-based version. The current version is made up of 4 main applications, each with different network management capabilities.

• CiscoView. CiscoView is an SNMP-based device management tool that provides a graphical view of the front and rear of Cisco devices. It provides a consistent graphical display of Cisco devices, providing dynamic on-screen monitoring, statistics, and configuration capabilities.

• WhatsUp Gold. This NMS product by Ipswitch provides SNMP-based monitoring, mapping, alert, and network discovery capabilities for all network devices.

• Threshold Manager. This tool allows you to define alert thresholds on Cisco RMON-enabled devices, such as the Catalyst line of switches.

• Show Commands. This tool provides a graphical interface to the show commands available on Cisco devices. This gives users who may not be familiar with IOS syntax the ability to view detailed system configuration and performance information.

CiscoWorks Blue is a product line aimed at companies managing networks that include consolidated Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and IP traffic. As such, the product is really only relevant to companies whose environments include IBM mainframes or AS/400s running the SNA protocol. The CiscoWorks Blue suite is made up of three main applications that provide the ability to map network resources, activate and deactivate devices, measure performance, and more. Internetwork Status Monitor allows router monitoring, configuration, and reporting to be managed from a mainframe console. SNA View provides the ability to troubleshoot SNA connectivity problems by provided visual representations of all active and inactive SNA connections. CiscoWorks Blue Maps provides graphical view of how SNA traffic relates to a routed TCP/IP network.

Remote Monitoring (RMON) is an extension to the SNMP MIB, and includes two versions – RMON and RMON 2. While SNMP relies on a regular polling and response mechanism between an NMS and individual managed devices to gather and collect information in real-time, the RMON protocol implements its monitoring capabilities using a batch-type method.

A typical RMON implementation consists of two major elements – a Network Management Station (NMS) and RMON probes. An RMON probe is a network device that collects information according to the traffic that passes through it, providing information about the health of the network itself, rather than a particular device. Unlike a traditional SNMP implementation, an RMON probe collects and stores this information, passing it to the NMS (via SNMP) when requested. As such, using RMON helps to avoid some of the network traffic issues associated with regular SNMP management. A typical RMON-enabled network will have one configured probe per segment.

RMON’s primary goal is to provide information relating to network errors and utilization. RMON data is gathered as part of nine different monitoring groups. Each of these provides information relevant to a different area of network monitoring such as gathering statistics, capturing packets, generating alerts, historical trend analysis, and so forth. While the original version of RMON was only capable of providing information up to the MAC level, RMON 2 is capable of monitoring traffic up to the application level. This allows information flows relating to particular applications to be assessed and analyzed.

RMON relies on being able to “see” all network traffic, which presents an issue in switched environments. As such, many network vendors now implement RMON probes as a feature within their switch products. For example, Cisco provides RMON probe capabilities within its Catalyst workgroup switches.