Infosim®, the technology leader in automated Service Fulfillment and Service Assurance solutions, today announced the release of its award-winning software suite StableNet® version 7.0 for Telco and Enterprise customers.

StableNet® 7.0 provides a significant number of powerful new features, including:

• StableNet® Embedded Agent (SNEA) that allows for highly distributed installations to support End-to-End (E2E) Visibility, Cloud Monitoring and Internet of Things (IoT)
• StableNet® Network Configuration & Change Management (NCCM) now offers a REST API extension to allow an easy workflow integration
• New look and feel of the StableNet® GUI to improve the user experience in terms of usability and workflow
• StableNet® Server is now based on WildFly 8.2, a modern Java Application Server that supports web services for easier integration of 3rd party systems
• Extended device support for Phybridge, Fortinet Firewalls, Arista, Sofaware (Checkpoint), Mitel, Keysource UPS, Cisco Meraki and Ixia

StableNet® version 7.0 is available for purchase now. Customers with current maintenance contracts may upgrade free of charge as per the terms and conditions of their contract.

Supporting Quotes:

Marius Heuler, CTO Infosim®

“With this new release of StableNet®, we have enhanced our technological basis and laid out the groundwork to support extensive new automation features for our customers. This is another big step forward towards the industrialization of modern network management.”

Thanks to Infosim for the article.

What is SNMP? Why should we use it? These are all common questions people ask when deciding if its the right feature for them, the answers to these questions are simple.

Simple Network Management Protocol is an “internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP netowrks”. Devices that typically support this solution include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks and more.

Key functions

• Collects data about its local environment.
• Stores and retrieves administration information as defined in the MIB.
• Signals an event to the manager.
• Acts as a proxy for some non–SNMP manageable network device.

It typicaly uses, one or more administrative computers, called managers, which have the task of monitoring or managing a group of hosts/devices on a computer network.

Each SNMP Monitoring tool provides valuable insight to any network administrator who requires complete visibility into the network, and it acts as a primary component of a complete management solution information via SNMP to the manager.

The specific agents uncover data on the managed systems as variables. The protocol also permits active management tasks, such as modifying and applying a new configuration through remote modification of these variables.

Companies such as Paessler & Manage engine have been providing customers with reliable SNMP for years, and its obvious why.

Why use it?

It delivers information in a common, non-proprietary manner, making it easy for an administrator to manage devices from different vendors using the same tools and interface.

Its power is in the fact that it is a standard: one SNMP-compliant management station can communicate with agents from multiple vendors, and do so simultaneously.

Another advantage of the application is in the type of data that can be acquired. For example, when using a protocol analyzer to monitor network traffic from a switch’s SPAN or mirror port, physical layer errors are invisible. This is because switches do not forward error packets to either the original destination port or to the analysis port.

However, the switch maintains a count of the discarded error frames and this counter can be retrieved via a simple network management protocol query.

Conclusion

When selecting a solution like this, choose a solution that delivers full network coverage for multi-vendor hardware networks including a console for the devices anywhere on your LAN or WAN.

If you want additional information download our free whitepaper below.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article. 

In the technology era that we live in something which cannot be ignored is SaaS network management, in business everything you work off is in some shape of form part of the tech network. This may include printers, phones, routers and even electronic note pads, all of these need to be managed successfully within the business to avoid misfortunes.

While looking at SaaS network management there are always going to be some pros and cons.

The ease of deployment

Because SaaS exists in the cloud, it eradicates the necessity of installing software on a system and ensures that it is configured properly. The management of SaaS is naturally handled through simple interfaces that allows the user to configure and provision the service as required.

As more establishments move their formerly in-house systems into the cloud, incorporating it with these existing services requires limited effort.

Lower costs

SaaS has a differential regarding costs since it usually resides in a shared or multitenant environment where the hardware and software license costs are low compared with the traditional models. Maintenance costs are reduced as well, since the SaaS provider owns the environment and it is split among all customers that use that solution.

Scalability and integration

Usually, SaaS solutions reside in cloud environments that are scalable and have integration with other SaaS offerings. Comparing with the traditional model, users do not have to buy another server or software. They only need to enable a new SaaS offering and, in terms of server capacity planning, the SaaS provider will own that.

Obviously in this world nothing is perfect and there are some slight downsides to SaaS network management. They are very minimal and some of them would not account for everyone, however it’s still necessary to mention them.

Limited applications.

SaaS is gaining in popularity. However, there are still many software applications that don’t offer a hosted platform. You may find it essential to still host certain applications on site, especially if your company relies on multiple software solutions.

Maintenance

Obviously SaaS adoption makes maintenance simpler, because the vendor has more control on the full installation. But the task here might be related to the psychological attitude. For an on premise installation, the customer accepts the responsibility for maintenance and allocates human resources for it. With SaaS the customer tends to this that he or she is released from any of these responsibilities, which is fairly true in most cases but you still should always be keeping an eye on the software no matter what.

Dependence on high speed internet

A high speed internet connection is a must for SaaS, while this is not a big challenge in developed nations, it can be a serious limitation in developing nations with poor infrastructure and unreliable connectivity. Thus firms should choose wisely understanding the connectivity bottleneck.

As you can see the pros outweigh the cons and in business today all organization are looking for a cheaper and faster resources, and it’s obvious that SaaS network management is on of them.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Fault monitoring is the process used to monitor all hardware, software, and network fault monitoring configurations for any deviations from normal operating conditions. This monitoring process typically includes major and minor changes to the expected bandwidth, performance, and utilization of the established computer environment.

Some of the features in fault monitoring may include:

• Automated correlation of root cause events without having to code or update rules
• Enriches alarm information and dashboards with business impacting data
• Provides alarm monitors for crucial KPIs of all network assets automatically
• Supports integration via SMS, pager, email, trouble ticket, and script execution on alarm events

Network fault management is a big challenge when you have a small team. The duty becomes more complicated if you have to manage a remote site and have to dispatch a technician to the site only to find out the problem is something you could have fixed remotely or you could find that you don’t have the right equipment and have to go back and get it that hurts your service restoration time.

In most cases, the time taken to identify the root cause of a problem is actually longer than the time taken to fix it. Having a proactive network fault monitoring tool helps you quickly identify the root cause of the problem and fix it before end-users notice it.

Finding that tool who can do a root cause analysis in real time has many benefits. If you have this tool it means your engineers get to focus on service affecting events and are able to properly prioritize them. Authentic problem analysis in real-time and subsequent problem solving requires precise automation of several interacting components.

If you would like to learn more about this topic please feel free to click below to get our educational whitepaper. It will give you a greater insight into these cloud serves such as fault monitoring and many more.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

When a network needs repair, modification, expansion or upgrading, the administrator Network Configuration Management refers to the network configuration management database to determine the best course of action.

This database contains the locations and network addresses of all hardware devices, as well as information about the programs, versions and updates installed in network computers.

A main focus to consider when discussing network configuration management is Policy checking capabilities. There are three key policy checking capabilities which should not be ignored, and they are as follows

1. Regulatory Compliance Policy
2. Vendor Default Policy
3. Security Access Policy

Regulatory compliance policy

The obvious one is regulatory compliance policy. If you have a network configuration system you should always implement a regular checking system to ensure consistency with design standards, processes and directives with internal and external regulators.

In the past people would use manual processes this is something that was time intensive, costly, inaccurate and more importantly, your business was at risk and open to potential attacks through not having the desired real-time visibility.

Now thanks to the infamous cloud this is all a thing of the past.

Vendor default policy

Vendor default policy is a best practice recommendation to scan the configurations of your infrastructure devices and to eradicate potential holes so that the risk can be mitigated. Furthermore so that the infrastructure security access is maintained to the highest possible levels.

Such holes may arise due to your configuration settings being overlooked. Sometimes a default username and passwords, or SNMP ‘public’ and ‘private’ community strings etc. are not removed, leaving a hole in your security for potential attacks.

Security Access Policy

Access to infrastructure devices are policed and controlled with the use of AAA (Authentication, Authorization, Accounting), TACACS+, RADIUS servers, and ACLs (Access Control Lists) so as to increase security access into device operating systems.

It is very important therefore that the configuration elements of infrastructure devices have the consistency across the managed estate. It is highly recommended to create security policies so that the configurations of security access can be policed for consistency and reported on if changed, or vital elements of the configuration are missing.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article. 

When you have a network discovery software solution it allows your computer to see another network computers and devices and allows people on other network computers to see your computer. This makes it easier to share files and printers etc, but that’s not all.

You may be asking why is this even important to me? The primary reasons why it is vital for your business to use network discovery is as follows:

• If you don’t know what you have, you cannot hope to monitor and manage it.
• You can’t track down interconnected problems.
• You don’t know when something new comes on the network.
• You don’t know when you need upgrades.
• You may be paying too much for maintenance.

Most of the time in network management you’re trying to track down potential issues within your network and how you’re going to resolve these issues. This is a very hard task especially if you’re dealing with a large scale network. If one thing goes down within the network it starts a trickle effect and then more aspects of the network will in return start to go down.

All of these problems are easily fixed. A lot of network discovery capabilities have powerful and flexible tools allowing you to determine what exactly is subject to monitoring.

These elements can be automatically labeled and grouped. This makes automatic data collection possible, as well as threshold monitoring and reporting on already discovered elements.

Another aspect of network discovery software is that it can perform a network topology discovery in the managed network. The discovery process probes each device to determine its configuration and relation to other managed elements.

This information can be then used to create instances as a dependency model. This simplifies event correlation, i.e. no rules programming and the subsystem guarantees identification of critical problems. The discovery detects network devices and topology automatically.

As a result of this we can access critical details like IP address, MAC address, OS, firmware, Services, Memory, Serial Numbers, Interface Information, Routing Information, Neighbor data, these are all available at the click of a button or as a scheduled report.

If you would like to find out more about how we can benefit your enterprise greatly then schedule a technical discussion with one of our experienced engineers.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.