[hobbit] Variable / continuous ping / network test (intervals)

[SebA]

McDonald, Dan <mailto:Dan.McDonald at austinenergy.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-11-13 at 18:14 +0000, SebA wrote:
>> Additionally (ideally):  I would like to know results of continuous
>> pings.  Rather than just sending a few pings every x minutes and
>> seeing the performance of those, it would be nice to have continuous,
>> or at least pings that are continuous for the duration specifed in
>> the new bb-hosts flag I have suggested above, e.g. at 5 or 10 second
>> intervals (so as not to overload routers or links), and to report the
>> results of these tests every x minutes (again, ideally, defined by
>> the new tag I have suggested above).
> 
> I solve that particular problem by dumping all of my syslogs from all
> routers into a common syslog server, then watch for routing protocol
> state changes (EIGRP up or down).  When I see a change down, I send a
> red message, and when I see an up, I send a green message.
> 
> It's a little more complicated than that, since I have to
> maintain state
> for all of these tests over several years.  The module I wrote is
> bb-eigrp, and it's on deadcat, but works fine with xymon

Interesting. We don't use EIGRP though. However, I expect it could be
adapted to other syslog messages. I suppose the module just needs to know
what UP and DOWN messages can look like... Even though, that won't cover
every single link in our network - not all devices support syslog (e.g. dumb
switching hubs and ADSL routers). I think I would rather a better ping test,
and then just red / yellow alarm certain syslog messages in the msgs column
(because links can stop working even when the managed switch/router thinks
they are still up (or before it thinks they are down)). Not to say I won't
take a look at your module at some point...

SebA