Hi David -
Your question is well-timed. I just put up for anonymous FTP the Rover 4.0
code (beta).
The previous versions of Internet Rover code has been in use since the
NSFNET days and has been downloaded and put in production in many locations
around the world. The original idea was to code a simple way to perform
tests on network devices and create alerts when the tests failed. Many
folks have added tests to the package and contributed them back for
incorporation into the software. Current tests include:
WWW, Named, SMTP, FTP, TELNET, PING, PORT, etc.
Basically, if you can make a subroutine that returns a Pass/Fail, it can be
incorporated into the code. These earlier versions of the code has scaled
to about a thousand nodes in our NOC.
This 4.0 version uses SNMP to externalize the list of alerts that Rover
generates to centralized network management station(s) for consolidation
into a single aggregate alert screen. This allows one to distribute the
monitoring function as appropriate and only pull back the list of what is
broken in the area. The cool thing is you can then build your hierarchy of
management stations in a lego block approach.
Currently the code has only been ported/tested on Solaris and SunOS systems.
The real release is going out after some other folks verify that it works
in their environment -- let me know your experiences with it... It
shouldn't take long to install: edit a couple files and type ./configure;make
The beta code and documentation is at:
http://www.merit.edu/internet.tools/rover
Hope this helps.
Bill