[ale] OT: Cisco documentation

[Christopher Fowler]

On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 14:59 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> 
> Have you thought about using SNMP traps instead.  That certainly seems
> more standard.  And I think there are various GPL monitoring packages
> that will monitor SNMP traps.

Sure the Cisco will send alarms via traps but this does not give me
access when I need it.

I have had to drive to 230 Peachtree Street at 4:30pm on a Friday and I
will never do that again.  The whole reason was that I had to attach to
the Cisco console and do some work because telnet was not working.  Once
you do that you'll never do it again.  

Anyway GPL monitoring packages will simply report what traps are
received.  I can tell you what comes across the console just like my
software can tell you what trap it receives.  I need to tell my software
specific things to look for.  Regardless if it is a message over the
console or a trap.

While there is a standard for data representation in SNMP there is no
standard in how people write their traps.  I can create one trap with a
var of STRING and just send messages and alarm codes.  Nortel BCM does
just this.  Or I can create a trap for every event.  Our device does
that.  There may be a standard in the way SNMP looks but when it comes
down to enterprise traps there are discrepancies on how they should be
written.  

If a device supports console monitoring I will always do that over SNMP.
If all I have is SNMP then so be it.