SNMP DISCOVERY & INVENTORY

 The most common question I get asked is “When troubleshooting, where do you start?”.

Other than the "client interview", the answer is simple, “start with an inventory”. When I say “Inventory” it is an all-encompassing term. It covers the physical equipment, connectivity, layer 2, 3, and any other layer it takes to get from point a to point b. Many times we can get a 'visual' from the client interview but other times we need more info, or have to confirm what they believe is out there.

I always say, “We can't fix what we can't see”. If the client already has documentation, great, let's review it with respect to the issue at hand. I am not surprised how many times I am presented with out-of-date documentation. In some cases, entire sites are omitted, not added or equipment upgrades are not reflected. I never consider this scenario a negative one and explain “all we have to do is update what we have”.

It's important that this does not turn into a “who didn’t update the documentation and why witch hunt”, let's just get the documentation updated and move on. This is always the interesting part of the documentation exercise; watching the client argue with colleagues about “who moved that”, “I thought we replaced that box”, and the ever-popular “that’s an old config”. Many times, we actually find and fix the problem as we go through the documentation exercise.

When I talk about the documentation process, the most common response I get is “I don’t have time to do that”, and I respond with “how much time do you have to update the documentation during an outage or troubleshooting?”

The best place to start with is at the physical layer, at the clients' desk and the destination could be a server/application you use. The client the best place to start because you can verify the cabling, switch configuration, etc easier. Then work your way up the physical layer, to layer2, then 3, etc. If you get stuck or aren’t sure, feel free to reach out to various people/departments for clarification.

You can literally start with a piece of blank paper, Powerpoint, Draw, Impress, heck, even Paint will do. As you build the maps, and more people see the value, you can consider a different application and how to share the information.

In this video, I was doing a physical inventory at a remote office and there was no documentation, so I grabbed a couple of my Cisco switches, enabled SNMP, swapped out the client’s switch, and ran a discover with my Optiview XG. Then I moved on to the next closet.

In this case, I took photos before I started, and documented all the current switch connections. Then I had to come in when no one was in the office, run my discovery and then put everything back. The whole process took an hour and about another 30 minutes putting the documentation together using Powerpoint.

“Its Dead Jim” Looking into a SSID Issue With My NetAlly Aircheck G2

 When troubleshooting WiFi issues, the last thing I want to do is worry about having issues with my laptop and trying to figure out how to do specific things.

For example, if you have 5 access points with the same SSID, can you connect to a specific BSSID using your Windows, Linux, Android or MAC for testing?

I’ve gone through various hacks, special drivers and all sorts of technical gymnastics to get my laptop to do specific WiFi troubleshooting tasks. That might be fine for learning and playing in the lab but not very practically when you have to troubleshoot on the fly.

In this scenario, I wanted to verify that a specific SSID was working on two access points. I ask this question all the time “are all your access points supporting your SSID’s?”. I ask because it is hard to verify if this is the case.

In some environments, you can go to your wireless controller, or to specific access points to confirm who is connected to it. But then you need the mac address of the device and in some cases, the support staff doesn’t have access to the controller or access point.

This is when I prefer to use my NetAlly AirCheck G2 since I can use it to connect to specific access points and run tests. In this video, I show you how I tested and proved if both access points were working properly.

Wireshark Windows Vs Linux

 I have always enjoyed testing tools in my lab. For those of you who have followed me over the years, know that I always say that you should ‘know your tools’. I know this sounds obvious but trust me, it is anything but obvious.

For example, you have a relatively new laptop with 8 GB or RAM, i7 processor and 1 Gb Ethernet adapter. So, you would think that you should be able to capture traffic up to 1 Gbps, right? Wrong!!

In my last article, “Wireshark, Microsoft pktmon, packet testing” (https://youtu.be/pZtWAwiH7lk), I compared various command line and GUI tools and how efficient they were in capturing packets. Thank you for all the feedback and I thought I would use one of the suggestions for this next article.

The point of the article is that you need to test your tools using various packet sizes and loads to determine when it will drop packets. The secondary goal is to show you how I tested my tools so you can use a similar methodology for your testing.

In this article, I compared the Wireshark GUI performance on a Linux and Windows. I used the same laptop for both tests and neither was within a VM. The only result that shocked me was that Windows barely outperformed Linux in the 10%, 64 Byte test. See, I learned something as well.

Packet Capture Accuracy

 This is a great example of ‘knowing your tool’ or ‘tool calibration’. Regardless of what you want to call it, it is important that you test your tools to ensure their accuracy.

In most cases analysts are turning to their laptops with either Windows, Linux or MAC OS as a tool of choice since laptops are might lighter, have increased battery life, more powerful and convenient to store results.

Unfortunately, convenience might come at a price. A good example would be to ask yourself if your laptop capture packets at various rates and packet sizes. Along with this question, should be a follow up to investigate how accurate your tool of choice is.

I see many people using USB/USB-c 1 Gb Ethernet adapters with their laptops which might be an issue if you just want to capture packets but might bite you when it comes to packet.

AI and the Future of Network Monitoring!

 The world of technology is constantly evolving and with it the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its uses in the field. By applying machine learning to examine data and historical trends, you can perform highly complex tasks while reducing human input.

This overview will describe the problem that AI and network monitoring must tackle, and how they both can do so.

The Problem

Over the years, humans have tried to figure out the solution to examining data and trends without the fear of human error. One of their earlier attempts was Dark Trace. While the software’s front end was astounding on the outside, the inside was abysmal. It took many hours of human input in order for the software to do its job of predicting and recognizing attacks and finding solutions. Despite it sparking people’s imaginations on AI, it wasn’t the AI solution that anyone wanted or needed.

Regardless of the failure of Dark Trace, researchers and developers have continued to dabble with AI. Today, AI can be used in network monitoring where large amount of time can get eaten up by keeping things as they are instead of looking for ways to improve your network performance. But what does AI and machine learning actually bring to network management?

Here are some unique ways that AI and network monitoring can work alongside each other:

Data Processing and Analysis

On a daily basis networks spit out large amounts of data that needs to be processed in order for you to understand the state of the network. This can be automated through AI and machine learning as the AI sifts through the data while comparing it to historical logs in order to identify potential trends. In most networks, a large amount of data is produced and rarely accessed meaning you may be missing key areas to improve the network performance and reduce its downtime.

It also has the added benefit of providing you with alerts real-time of any malicious or dangerous data as it occurs allowing you to focus on dealing with those issues instead of managing the data. “Human oversight is still critical here as while the AI can identify a problem it will not be able to determine what caused it,” cautions tech writer Katie Broomfield, Ukwritings review and Assignment service. It’s best to use AI to simply process the data and identify potential issues, then to take the time to have actual employees look into what caused the issue in the first place and implement changes.

One example of data processing and analysis at work is Service Delivery Intelligence (SDI) from Enterprise Intelligence. It’s an AI solution that speeds up performance analysis data searches, so that problems can be detected, and solutions can be made on the fly. It also allows for AI-assisted capacity planning, meaning that traffic flow can be simulated and then carry adequate switch-by-switch performance.

Problem Solving

In addition, there are some areas of problem-solving AI and machine learning can help in. It is possible to build smart switches into your network AI in order to manage the flow of traffic on your network and prioritising critical tasks. This means that you can be sure traffic is being managed in terms of priority without worrying that critical traffic is being held up in the system. The AI does this by analysing Ethernet packages to assign various levels of service while preventing compromise in the transition of other network data. This does require human input as you need to program the AI to understand what data should be prioritised and what should be given lesser priority.

Regardless, there are some reputable AI solutions that allow for great problem solving. For example, IBM Watson Field Service Advisor is an AI solution that helps technicians resolve field service requests without them having to scramble to meet them. IBM Watson will suggest possible solutions on how to resolve problems, providing “over-the-shoulder support” for technicians.

Human Input

Finally, let’s not rule out humans entirely.

“While no human can match the efficiency and processing capability of a machine, humans still remain crucial to inputting the data and understanding its context. AI can still give false positives, it’s up to us humans to identify when it happens,” says business writer Jason Stanley, Academ advisor and Via Writing.

We may be moving forward but without humans there is no use for AI which is not capable of making critical decisions relating to cyber-security and identifying the areas that are best suited for improvement. Automation is a good tool for improving the overall processing of your data but should not be the pillar on which your network is built and the be all and end all of network monitoring.

Conclusion

Overall, in terms of providing a solution for the general administration work involved in network monitoring, AI and machine learning is making great strides to automate this process allowing your team to focus on the areas that actually matter. However, it is not something that works by magic and not a silver bullet for your problems. You need humans to program and maintain the AI in order to make sure that it is doing what you want it to do, and there is no AI yet able to fully understand the context of a situation or identify the causation of any issues.

It’s worth investing in an AI to lessen the load on your networking team, but be warned that this may create some extra work in turn, especially when first getting set up. If you use it wisely, AI will bring great benefits and help you quickly deal with network situations as they occur.

The author - Technical writer and project coordinator Sara Sparrow, Best essay writing services and Student writing services, consults businesses and participates in conferences to share her knowledge of technology and marketing. In her spare time, she also writes on a wide array of topics for online magazines and blogs like Top essay services