Reminds me of a tech that took care of railroad switching. He said that the
only thing that crossing arms mean is that if they are down, a train might be
coming. Otherwise they indicate nothing of value. Meaning of course, that you
can never trust them if they are up.
From: Ken Hohhof
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2024 1:38 PM
To: af@af.afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
My first job out of college was at the GTE equivalent of Western Electric,
designing factory test equipment. I remember they had a way of teaching newbies
to never rely on the absence of an indication (no news is good news).
There was a box in the lab labelled "fuse tester", with a fuse holder, a
button, and a light labelled "fuse blown". So someone would put a good fuse in
the holder, and nothing would happen. Nobody was satisfied with that, so even
the pushbutton was not labelled, they would push it. And of course then the
"fuse blown" light would come on.
---- Original Message ----
From: dmmoff...@gmail.com
Sent: 5/9/2024 1:44:17 PM
To: "'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group'"
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:*
{behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
As far as something newer/better than SNMP, there is Netconf (RFC6241). In a
nutshell, it uses HTTP to carry XML data with the queries and commands. It’s
“push” rather than “pull”, so you put the NMS URL in the device rather than
adding every device to the NMS. In theory, if your NMS server blows up you can
stand up a new one on the same IP address and all the devices start talking to
it like nothing happened. And (hopefully) your devices can get the NMS URL via
a DHCP option or RADIUS attribute or whatever so you don’t actually have to
enter it on every device. It’s also supposed to be lighter on the network and
lighter on the devices because they don’t have to provide every value in every
polling interval; they can just update the NMS with whatever changed from the
previous interval.
So there are a lot of positive aspects to the new way, but the problem is SNMP
has been around for over 3 decades and you have a huge installed base of
software and hardware using it. I believe Nokia (Altiplano) uses Netconf, and
I know the Telrad LTE stuff did as well…..and in both cases they chose NOT to
implement SNMP on the device at all. Nokia, I believe, provides some kind
middleware so you can have a machine taking SNMP queries and translating it to
talk to the NetConf server. I’m fuzzy on that piece because I’ve only seen
Powerpoint about it. Telrad just said screw SNMP. My point being that the two
Netconf implementations I know about both opted for Netconf only, rather than
keeping SNMP for backward compatibility.
Email alerts sounds like the easy way up until it doesn’t work. It seems like
these days you always run into anti-spam features. I’d suggest if you do that
you have the device send from an email address on the same domain and same host
as your company email and ask the provider to (1) exempt that sender from spam
and virus scanning, (2) dev/null any incoming mail for that address, and (3)
set the password to never expire. Optionally (4) have them only accept mail
from that sender if it comes from your IP addresses. If it accepts incoming
mail you’ll eventually end up with infinite gigs of backscatter. Also, fully
expect your IT people to delete that account sometimes. This may sound stupid,
but it happens. Some well meaning new guy will review email accounts and find
this one account that nobody has ever logged into and delete it assuming it’s a
dead account. Oh….write down the password somewhere because you’ll need to set
in every device and you’ll need to be able to put it back in when the new IT
guy deletes it. If you ever have to reset it then obviously you have to touch
every device to update them.
If they’ll let you send without auth that avoids any password related
hardships, but then item (4) in my list is no longer optional.
You’ll have to cope with all the same issues when your NMS sends email, but you
cope with it on one server instead of 1000 devices.
My final comment about email alerts is you don’t know when they stop working.
If the NMS can’t poll the device with SNMP you’ll get an alert about that, but
if the device can’t send an email that looks the same as if there just aren’t
any problems right now. You’ll find out when something bad happens and you
realize you didn’t get the alert.
So yeah…..SNMP is what I’d do. Maybe Netconf someday when there’s wider
support for it.
For reading dry contacts with SNMP I certainly like Packetflux, and we bought
lots of SiteMonitors in our WISP days. There’s also controlbyweb.com,
sometimes they typically cost more than a SiteMonitor, but sometimes they’ll
have one box that gives you the right mix of contacts whereas you needed a
Sitemonitor + Expansion to get the same thing with Packetflux.
-Adam
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown via AF
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2024 5:42 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Cc: ch...@go-mtc.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
I think the simple email alert is what we are looking for.. No NMS needed.
From: castarritt
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 3:33 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
We've done stuff as ghetto as powering an old wrt54g through the alarm contacts
and monitoring its IP address to see when it comes up and goes down. These
days all of our sites have either an Alpha or ICT UPS or DC shelf that has
alarm monitoring inputs.
On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 4:30?PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com> wrote:
As long as you support SMTP AUTH, I think that should be sufficient. If
necessary, someone could always create a Gmail account for this purpose.
Yes, there are some older devices that expect you to set them up as an MTA
rather than MUA so they can send unauthenticated SMTP on port 25. That sounds
like a really bad plan to me unless you time travel back to maybe 1999. I
don’t want to be creating SPF and DKIM and DMARC records for a little contact
monitoring box, and it sounds like a security nightmare.
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Forrest Christian (List
Account)
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 4:13 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
Some devices can be configured to send an email if a contact closes, but the
way this happens varies between devices.
My problem with integrating this on the the sitemonitor platform has
traditionally been that you need a rule system in order to determine when to
send the email. I.E. what threshold of voltage, and so on. This is obviously
easy in a on/off situation, but not so much in a voltage. Plus you need
additional rules so when the voltage is bouncing between 24.0 and 24.1 and you
have the threshold set at 24.0 you don't get an email every time it flaps to
24.0. All of this was impossible to do on the older hardware just because of
code space limitations.
The Base 3 has the resources to do this, but the firmware has not yet been
completed. There is a rules engine about 3/4 built for the sitemonitor system,
how long until it sees the light of day, I don't know at this point. The
email itself is somewhat easy but I also need to provide some sort of email
server resources for those who don't have an email system which will accept
email from random devices.
On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 2:55?PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com> wrote:
Not following how you are going to use SNMP without a monitoring system.
Packetflux Sitemonitor can turn a contact closure into a 1 or 0 OID that an
SNMP monitoring system can check at regular intervals, mine mostly polls every
1 minute. But then you would typically have your NMS send an alert by email or
text message.
I tend to monitor analog parameters like voltage or current, then set trip
points for the NMS to send an informative message. Like UPS input voltage at
the Podunk site has been below the minimum value of 100 V for more than 2
minutes.
---- Original Message ----
From: "Chuck McCown via AF"
Sent: 5/8/2024 2:41:36 PM
To: "TJ Trout" , "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group"
Cc: ch...@go-mtc.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
So how do Forrest’s products let you know of an issue? Traps?
\Would love to NOT have to have NMS just for this.
From: TJ Trout
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 1:35 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Cc: Chuck McCown
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
Packet flux can do it all too, the base unit can monitor two voltages and
temp and a few contact closures, if you need more volt inputs or closures you
add a expansion unit. No email that I'm aware of
On Wed, May 8, 2024, 12:23?PM Chuck McCown via AF <af@af.afmug.com> wrote:
No, we have fuse alarms, rectifier, inverter, and other comm equipment
alarm contacts. Circuit breaker alarms. That is why historically I liked the
netguardian product. It eats everything. Monitors DC voltages etc. Temps
From: Bill Prince
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 1:13 PM
To: af@af.afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SNMP
I think if your installed equipment all came from one vendor, there might
be some way to do their proprietary monitoring solution.
However, SNMP as flawed as it might be, is the only standard that is
nearly universal (because some implementations are better than others).
bp<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>On 5/8/2024 11:30 AM, Chuck McCown via AF wrote:
We are needing to add some monitoring of old fashioned alarm contacts
in one of our sites. In the past I used Netguardians. Not sure what Forrest
has.
Is SNMP still the defacto NMS comm method or are there better more
modern stuff out there we should be looking at?
Best Regards,
Chuck McCown
McCown Technology Corporation
8401 N Commerce Dr
Lake Point, Utah 84074
801-250-9503 Office
435-830-4306 Cell
www.mccowntech.com
www.microtrench.pro
www.terabitnetworks.com
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