The Significance of RMON in Network Management

Remote Monitoring, commonly known as RMON, is a crucial network management protocol that allows network administrators to gather information from a centralized workstation. This protocol has been specifically designed to assist network managers in comprehending the overall operation of the network, as well as the performance of individual devices such as switches, routers, and hosts, and how they impact the network's mode of operation. RMON offers network administrators the flexibility to choose network-monitoring probes and consoles that align with their specific networking requirements.

The development of RMON was a collaborative effort between the user community and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It was introduced as a proposed standard in 1992 with RFC 1271 for Ethernet, and later advanced to a draft standard in 1995 with RFC 1757, effectively replacing RFC 1271. The primary objective behind the creation of the RMON standard was to address management protocol limitations that were not adequately handled by existing protocols. This protocol can be supported by hardware monitoring devices, known as "probes," or through software, or a combination of both.

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For instance, many LAN switches from various vendors come equipped with software that can capture information as traffic passes through and store it in their Management Information Base (MIB). A software agent can then gather this information and present it to the network administrator through a user-friendly graphical interface. Several vendors offer products with diverse RMON support capabilities.

RMON is capable of collecting nine types of information, including packets sent, bytes sent, packets dropped, statistics by host, conversations between different sets of addresses, events, alarms, history, and statistics.

This data allows network administrators to determine the bandwidth usage by each user on the network, monitor accessed websites, and set alarms to anticipate potential issues. An RMON probe can function as management appliance software or be integrated into the managed device. These probes are strategically positioned near the monitored network elements to analyze RMON information such as traffic patterns and alarms.

RMON probes undertake various tasks, such as collecting statistics, periodic polling, subscribing to notifications, and generating alerts based on threshold crossings by configuring Management Information Bases (MIBs). The utilization of RMON probes offers several advantages, including reduced Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traffic, decreased processing load on clients, and the use of periodic polling instead of continuous polling, which helps streamline processes.

References

• Clemm, A. Network Management Fundamentals Edition 1 (1st ed). Pearson Learning Solutions. Retrieved from http://devry.vitalsource.com/books/9781256084068/id/ch02lev2sec9
• Waldbusser, S. (2000, May). Rfc 2819. Retrieved from http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2819
• Rouse, M. (2010, November). RMON (Remote Network Monitoring). Retrieved from http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/RMON
• Javvin. RMON: Remote Monitoring MIBs (RMON1 and RMON2). Retrieved from http://www.javvin.com/protocolRMON.html

References

• Rfc 2819
• RMON (Remote Network Monitoring)