Cisco Alerts

Once you set up a network using managed Cisco switches, you may find yourself wondering about what is going on in your network, especially as it grows in complexity. The game here is to use some kind of Network Management Software (NMS), which serves as a middle man between you and Cisco gear which talks via SNMP to the NMS software. The NMS software can be configured to send emails, make cell phone calls, and such when certain events take place.

OpenNMS is free software to do NMS.

Another option (but it costs money) is whatsup. Just based on all the obnoxious dazzle and needless motion on their website and their silly name, I already dislike them.

Once you have your NMS installed and running, you tell your cisco routers what server to talk to and what traps you are interested in. Take a look at this Cisco document. The game goes like this:

(config) snmp-server host x.x.x.x {community string}
(config> snmp-server enable traps config
(config> snmp-server enable traps snmp

This would let you know about configuration changes, reboots, snmp authentication failures, and links going up and down. There are many more (you should read the tedious cisco manual).

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Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org