A monitor tool for a network based on the cambridge ring
S Vassiliades, Michael D. Sayers, Jean Bacon · Software Practice and Experience · 1986
Abstract An evolving network is subject to technological advances and increasing user demands through out its lifetime. Continuous monitoring is therefore required to understand its behaviour in the operational environment and to provide an aid to planning. A monitor tool has been developed to meet such requirements in a heavily used service network. A decentralized but integrated approach has been adopted. An active collection allows accumulated measurements to be retrieved. The measurements required are determined and the constraints imposed by existing mechanisms and the methods chosen are discussed. Flexible user facilities are available to allow selected measurements to be collected and displayed, and these are described. Daily sessions of network‐wide monitoring have been undertaken. The overhead incurred is quantified. The sessions revealed communications software errors and anomalous behaviour of a network node. Further analysis shows the symptoms of the latter, the result of a hardware fault. Enhancements which would increase the flexibility of the tool are also suggested.