Approach and Objectives

This is not your typical network management book. Most network management books in the market provide an exhaustive explanation of SNMP and its protocols and reprint publicly available MIB documents. While the information is helpful for MIB developers and to some extent practitioners, these types of books tend not to be useful for someone needing to get their management up in a quick and useful manner.

Our experience, both from cases we received in the Cisco TAC and from consulting with customers, has revealed that these books are useful in academic and engineering settings. However, they provide little practical value for those who have to implement the concepts in their networks. The concepts are too general, and the authors typically do not offer experience based recommendations.

Performance and Fault Management departs from the pattern of generic SNMP reprint books. It is a detailed primer on setting up and reporting fault and performance management and a reference that helps Cisco customers cut through the complex management of Cisco devices. Each chapter provides explanations and data only for those things that we feel are important based on our experiences in implementing network management and our know-ledge of Cisco devices.

The objectives of this book are to

• Provide an overview of router and LAN switch operations in order to help the reader better understand how to manage the devices

• Provide guidance on the essential MIBs, traps, syslog messages, and show commands critical for managing Cisco routers and LAN switches, including undocumented IOS commands

• Describe techniques for implementing fault and performance management based on the authors' experiences

• Help Cisco customers understand and navigate the many MIBs and management interfaces of Cisco devices

After completing this book, you will be able to

• Design and implement fault and performance monitoring that will measure and report the effectiveness of your Cisco network investment.

• Generate reports and alerts that report network information and status to management and operations staff.

• Navigate Cisco's documentation and MIBs in order to determine what elements to manage for a given technology