OC3MON with NeTraMet Statistics Module

 Until december 1996 OC3MON has been a stand-alone development. Only recently, Nevil Brownlee has written a NeTraMet statistics module for OC3MON which is now part of the OC3MON distribution.

The ``OC3MON-NeTraMet'' has interesting advantages compared to the ``traditional'' OC3MON software:

• The interface is standardized. This makes it easier to develop own applications for OC3MON.
• Using SNMP also allows to integrate OC3MON into existing network management environments.
• By using SNMP, now at least a simple security mechanism is implemented.
• The sophisticated flow-measurement tools (nifty/NeMaC) that have been developed for use with NeTraMet are now usable on OC3 lines as well.
• Existing accounting solutions that have been implemented for ethernet can now be used on ATM OC3 without any modifications.
• The NeTraMet architecture with its ``meter manager'' entities gives the meter reader much more control over granularity, since it allows the upload of user-defined rulesets to the meter. On the traditional OC3MON it was only possible to set the granularity with a command line switch, and not too many possibilities were implemented.

A disadvantage of the NeTraMet mode for OC3 certainly is that it is harder to write a web interface using SNMP than it is using when just a telnet command and a Perl script that analyzes the queries. Nevertheless it is surely worth the additional effort, since those applications written for the NeTraMet environment will be of use for a much larger community. Additionally, NeTraMet and its structure have matured for a long time which assures that the mechanisms and protocols are working reliably.