Open Source Tool for Management Network Information

Abstract

Although there are quite a few Open Source monitoring applications, they have not reached yet the necessary maturity level. Many users have to face important problems when deploying a monitoring system for their networks. In this paper we compare the most popular open source monitoring tools, and we analyze their main limitations. As a solution for these problems we propose a new monitoring tool, that incorporates several outstanding improves, such as a centralized configuration via web, support for monitoring templates, a hierarchical structure of objects to handle the management information, and support for centralized and distributed monitoring schemes. We describe in detail its architecture, and show its use in a real environment, which makes it possible to verify the importance of the improvements that have been developed.