Just started playing around with The Dude for network monitoring, abandoned AirControl shudders due to the lack of… well everything.
I’m looking for documentation to get my feet wet, I have a general understanding of how to “use” The Dude. However I need some starting points.
We have well over 6 towers, covering 4 cities, many feeder towers, running an Ubquiti Radio+Antenna / Mikrotik Router network. What I’m looking for is what kind of maps and the breakdown of each one that are useful. (i.e. Backbone Map for just Back Hauls, Map for Each City w/ CPE’s, An entire network map, and so on)
To make sure I don’t cause to much broadcast data on the network, what is common practice for polling options. Leave them default?
Should I be using general connection methods to each radio or is it better to use SNMP?
Same goes for my mikrotik routers, should I use SNMP to monitor data or use simple connection?
And so on, I’m sure the questions can be limitless. All I want is a general way for my techs and I too at a glance see what is up and down. What has gone down, be notified of such, and a general pretty picture of what the network looks like. Helps my newer techs visualize the choas we have as a WISP.
Thanks in advance for all the helpful information!
I suggest starting with the default, and let Dude discover available services. If you see too much traffic, disable things you don’t need.
If you have MikroTik devices, it is worth to provide Dude with username/password to them, and check “RouterOS” in device settings, this will give you much more data than generic SNMP probes, and will even let you do simple configuration through the Dude.
The manual covers a lot of stuff, so read through it, and let us know if you have specific questions.
I advise you to spend a bit of time planning your map layout. You need to set up a system that is only 2 layers deep otherwise you will not see a “down” device on the third layer from the top layer. Maybe a Top layer showing your backhaul links and submap connectors for each of your tower sites. Then on each submap you put all of the devices that relate to that tower. Probably not so simple as that though. I am now on my third iteration of Dude maps because our network has grown and some of the things I had initially set up would no longer “fit” with what I had built.
Care should be taken with auto discover, the dude collects routing data so if you have an internet connected router and it is participating in BGP the collection of the data can strain some weak CPUs.
The user manual wiki is a great place to start. Although some of it is dated everything you could ever need is in this forum or the wiki. http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/The_Dude