Variable / continuous ping / network test (intervals)

McDonald, Dan <mailto:user-290ce4e24e19@xymon.invalid> 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