NRF makes a very good point below about OSS systems. Pulling this off from the original thread to take the discussion in a differnent direction.
As we probably all would agree, the largest cost in running a network is not the engineering cost or the capital costs, but rather the cost of operating the network (NOC, call center, tier 1-(N-1) support, etc.) In the world I live in, the engineering group, when introducing new gear, design, service, or architecture, is reponsible to also provide the OIDs to monitor, how often to poll, what each OID means, what are key thresholds, and what it means (or one should do) when an OID value passes one of these thresholds. The NM folks than update their tools (OSSs) and processes based on this information. The engineering involved in this portion of the design can either make or break the cost effectiveness of a design. So two points: 1) It would seem that any CCIE-type training/testing should include NM information into the material to be learned. From what I can tell, it does not. I'm not suggesting that one would need to memorize every OID in every MIB, but it would seem important to know key OIDs in each functional area and what useful information they provide. 2) For the folks on this list that write books in this space, it would seem very appropriate if NM topics where covered as well. Take a book which talks about the many different routing protocols. All of them explain how the protocol operates, the format of messages, and and how to configure and debug a router running the protocol. There's only so many ways one can explain OSPF type 1-4,5 and 7 LSAs and stub/TSA/NSSAs. One way to differentiate the contents of a book would be to include key OIDs one should consider putting in their NM systems to make sure OSPF/IS-IS/BGP/etc. is operating as expected (or not). My $0.02. nrf wrote: > > Yet at the same time we have the opposite phenomena - guys who can configure > routers in a Sunday minute, but can't even spell RFC. What I'm talking > about is guys who might know what all the commands are, but have no > grounding in routing protocol theory or any such higher concepts. All they > know is - they see this problem, they type in this command. Such guys are > useful if you need to troubleshoot your network at 3 in the morning, not so > useful if you want to do something that isn't in a textbook. And besides, I > hate to say it, but these guys are destined to be replaced by a good OSS. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=60215&t=60215 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
