Sams Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Summary

“Network management” can be a slippery phrase; it’s used to refer to everything but the kitchen sink. In its most helpful form, network management involves remote network monitoring and configuration, which allows you to assess the health of your network, as well as to tweak things from a distance.

Tools can be broken down into several categories: SNMP management consoles, which can auto-discover your network, track critical SNMP statistics, receive SNMP traps, and page you when things are out of spec. Pollers, unlike SNMP management stations, actually attempt to contact services the way that end users do; the good ones also keep track of response time and page you when things are “down” or simply slow. Packages like WhatsUp combine ...