nanog mailing list archives

Re: Incident notification


From: William Herrin <bill () herrin us>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 13:56:50 -0500

On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Matthew Huff <mhuff () ox com> wrote:
The advantage of SMS is that it is out of band. Any smtp
or other IP based solution requires a stable and working
network environment, which is what the alert may be
trying to tell you is down.

Which is why you locate a small NMS outside your network (on a VM
somewhere) whose only job is to start alerting when it can't reach the NMS
inside your network. That also helps when your interior NMS system gets
gummed up or when a general emergency in your locality damages your
infrastructure at the same time as the SMS provider's infrastructure.

If your monitoring system is structured well to begin with, email has
efficacy comparable to sms. A smartphone app expecting heartbeats via your
in-band infrastructure has effectiveness superior to both.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

--
William Herrin ................ herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
May I solve your unusual networking challenges?


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