Options for monitoring remote networks

RouterOS The Dude
1

We currently have 10 or so RB750g/non g routers in the wild. Our intention was to create a management network by VPN from each location to our central location. Now that we’ve discovered what the Dude can do for us in the way of monitoring device uptime and with SNMP, application status on Windows boxes without the need of a third party software, we’re looking at rolling out The Dude.

My question has more to do with how to poll data without bringing down a box.

I’ve already hung a router (physically close) by doing auto discovery and polling through the WAN interface from our main Dude server. It was a smaller subset of devices so I’m already sure that this will fail for our larger networks.

Will we be better off running The Dude as an agent on a computer behind the router and having it do the heavy lifting and gather through an open port on the firewall or will we be better off finishing the VPN network and just polling each separate VPN’d subnet?

2

I’ve already hung a router (physically close) by doing auto discovery

That tends to happen. Nobody seems to know why, but it does.

It’s safer to map the network as you go - manually.

I also run several separate networks, and map them all on a central Dude using PPtP tunnels from the ‘remote’ networks over the Internet.

I turn off the SNMP for the remote sites, because i dont really want loads and loads of Dude traffic running about thru the Internet.

A Better solution would be to put a Dude sever (433UAH+USB hard drive) on each remote network, but i’m too greedy with the money.