JP2005236369A - Remote monitoring system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a remote monitoring system capable of surely distinguishing faults in a LANTA and a DSU in a wide area WAN from faults in routers/switching hubs, decreasing the effect on the entire monitoring system even on the occurrence of a fault in a simple remote monitoring apparatus and reducing a fault detection time even in a large scale network. <P>SOLUTION: When detecting the occurrence of a fault in a monitoring object apparatus, the simple remote monitoring apparatus 4 transmits a status of the monitoring object apparatus to an information providing server 6 via a monitoring dialup network 30 and transmits its own keepalive packet to the information providing server 6 by utilizing a wide area WAN channel 20, and the information providing server 6 displays fault occurrence information in a way that a Web browser terminal 7 can browse the information. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a remote monitoring system that facilitates fault isolation and reduces costs by collectively managing information from a simple remote monitoring apparatus.

  Frame relays and dedicated lines have been used for WAN (Wide Area Network) lines in conventional companies, but they are high-speed and inexpensive, and since no fixed path is established, they can communicate freely between any base An increasing number of users are using topologically flat IP-VPN networks and wide-area Ethernet (R) services. This is because if all bases such as branches, sales offices, factories, etc. are accommodated in the above wide area WAN service, it is possible to flexibly cope with the relocation addition of the bases, and it is possible to construct a faster and cheaper wide area network. It is.

  Here, it is difficult for a monitoring service provider who is undertaking remote monitoring of a carrier that provides a wide area WAN line or a corporate network that uses the wide area WAN line, to isolate a fault in the remote monitoring including the wide area WAN line. There was a problem such as being. Furthermore, carriers that provide wide area WAN line services should be monitored by DSU (Digital Service Unit) and LANTA (Local Area Network Terminal Adapter) installed at the customer site. In addition, there is a tendency to expand services by targeting installation and monitoring at the customer's responsibility, including routers and switching hubs for WAN access installed at customer sites. Disability isolation has become an important issue for carriers.

  Up to now, a method as shown in FIG. 4 has been generally used for monitoring a corporate network using a wide area WAN line. Referring to FIG. 4, the centralized monitoring device 8 installed in the monitoring center 70 is a device that performs polling periodically by sending a ping packet to the device to be monitored and performs keep-alive monitoring. The centralized monitoring device 8 is connected to the same wide area WAN line 20 in which the devices to be monitored are accommodated, and ping packets are transmitted via the wide area WAN line 20. Note that the monitoring center 70 may be a facility of a carrier that operates the wide area WAN line 20, or may be a case where a monitoring service company independent of the carrier prepares and performs monitoring.

In addition, a technique related to a remote monitoring device that minimizes the influence on the corporate network when performing remote centralized monitoring in a distributed network management environment has been proposed (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
JP 2001-154883 A

  However, the conventional example described above has the following problems.

  First, when there is no response to the ping packet sent by the centralized monitoring device 8 as polling, that is, when it has not arrived, it is difficult to identify the cause of non-delivery. Causes of non-delivery include failure inside wide area WAN line, failure of network equipment connected to wide area WAN line, failure of LANTA or DSU, failure of premises wiring system of user base and power outage of monitored base. If one failure occurs, the ping packet is not delivered.

  FIG. 3 shows the cause of non-delivery when a ping packet is transmitted from the centralized monitoring apparatus 8 and is not delivered. Referring to FIG. 3, the arrival period of the ping packet varies depending on the failure location, but it is difficult to determine how far the arrival period of the ping packet is seen from the centralized monitoring device 8. Here, an arrow a indicates a ping packet arrival period when the network device 1 fails, an arrow b indicates a ping packet arrival period when the LANTA 2 fails, an arrow c indicates a ping packet arrival period when the DSU 9 fails, and an arrow d indicates A ping packet arrival section when the LAN is defective and an arrow e indicate the ping packet arrival section when a failure occurs in the wide area WAN line 20. A device that can receive and respond to a ping packet is only a network device 1 such as a router or a switching hub accessing a wide area WAN line 20 used by a user base, and other LANTA 2 and DSU 9 are: Since it is a mere transmission device, when its function is normal, it only allows a ping packet to pass.

  Also, the carrier that monitors the wide area WAN line 20 has a different handling method depending on whether the LANTA 2 or DSU 9 responsible for monitoring is faulty or the router / switching hub 1 is faulty. In the former case, it is necessary to go to the customer base for repair, but in the latter case, it is only necessary to notify the customer. Here, if all of the responsibility of the same carrier including the router / switching hub 1, LANTA2, and DSU9 are within the scope of responsibility, the technical field, maintenance company, and arrangement of service personnel visiting the site are required depending on the type of the faulty device. Since the spare parts are different, it is desirable to remotely identify the cause of the failure in advance, but it is difficult to identify the cause of the non-delivery of the ping packet. In addition, it is difficult to check the lighting status of LANTA2 lamps and whether or not a power failure has occurred on the customer's phone, etc., and it is difficult at night. It does not necessarily have the ability to provide.

  In addition, if all the monitoring target devices are polled centrally from one centralized monitoring device 8, all monitoring is stopped when the centralized monitoring device 8 breaks down. Reliability is required. Here, there is a method of decentralizing the centralized monitoring apparatus 8, but there is a problem that the system configuration and operation become complicated.

  Further, in reducing the polling cycle, there is a limit on the performance of the centralized monitoring device 8 in a large-scale network where a large number of monitoring target devices exist. As a result, service degradation such as a long time until failure detection occurs. Here, there is a method of decentralizing the centralized monitoring apparatus 8, but there is a problem that the system configuration and operation become complicated.

  Therefore, an object of the present invention is to install a simple remote monitoring device at the same site as the monitoring target device, thereby causing a failure of a LANTA or DSU that is a responsibility area of a wide area WAN carrier and a router accessing the wide area WAN. / Switching hub failure isolation can be performed remotely and reliably, even if a simple remote monitoring device fails, the impact on the entire monitoring system can be reduced, and failure detection time can be reduced even in large networks. It is to provide a remote monitoring system that can be shortened.

  According to the first aspect of the present invention, the simple remote monitoring device installed at the same site as the site where the network device is installed performs monitoring of the network device connected using the wide area WAN line, and the simple remote monitoring is performed. A remote monitoring system including a server commonly used as a system separate from the device, wherein the simple remote monitoring device includes failure detection means for detecting failure occurrence information and failure recovery information of the network device to be monitored; The failure occurrence information and failure recovery information are transmitted via a dial-up public network that is prepared separately from the wide area WAN line used only when the failure occurrence information and failure recovery information detected by the failure detection means are detected. The failure information transmitting means for transmitting to the server and the simple remote monitoring device are self-correcting. And keep alive information sending means for periodically sending keep alive information for displaying the e-mail to the server in the form of an e-mail using the wide area WAN line, the server from all the simple remote monitoring devices Receiving means for receiving the failure occurrence information and failure recovery information transmitted via a dial-up public network prepared separately from the wide area WAN line, and the keep alive information transmitted from all the simple remote monitoring devices So that the WWW browser user can browse the failure occurrence information and the failure recovery information transmitted from all the simple remote monitoring devices. A remote monitoring system comprising: a display means for displaying.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the remote monitoring system according to the first aspect, the simple remote monitoring device is a rechargeable battery to prevent a site where the device is installed from being out of power and monitoring. Means.

According to the remote monitoring system of the present invention, the simple remote monitoring device includes a failure detection unit that detects failure occurrence information and failure recovery information of the network device to be monitored, and failure occurrence information and failure detected by the failure detection unit. Fault information transmitting means for transmitting fault occurrence information and fault recovery information to a server via a dial-up public network prepared separately from a wide area WAN line used only when recovery information is detected, and a simple remote monitoring device A keep alive information sending means for periodically sending keep alive information for displaying normality to the server in the form of an e-mail using the wide area WAN line is provided. What is the wide area WAN line from all the simple remote monitoring devices to the server? Failure occurrence information and failure recovery sent via a separate dial-up public network Receiving means for receiving information, receiving means for receiving keep-alive information sent from all the simple remote monitoring devices in the form of an e-mail over a wide area WAN line, and sending from all the simple remote monitoring devices By providing a display means for displaying the failure occurrence information and the failure recovery information so that the WWW browser user can browse, it is possible to access the WAN with the failure of the LANTA or DSU that is responsible for the carrier of the wide area WAN. Isolation of router / switching hub faults can be performed remotely and securely, and even if individual faults of simple remote monitoring devices occur, the impact on the entire remote monitoring system can be reduced. The monitored devices that are the targets of the simple remote monitoring device on the network also access the wide area WAN. Since the number of routers / switching hubs, etc., is limited, the polling cycle can be set short, so the failure detection time can be shortened, and the simple remote monitoring device can be operated with a rechargeable battery. Therefore, even if the entire site where the simple remote monitoring device is installed has a power outage, the simple remote monitoring device can operate alone, so it is possible to notify the monitoring target device during a power outage. Because the simple remote monitoring device keep-alive information is sent using an e-mail format, it is possible to notify the external server without changing the system even if there is a firewall. Also, failure information and recovery information detected by the simple remote monitoring device are separated from the wide area WAN line only when the detected information changes. Since the prepared dial-up public network is used, there are many features such that the communication cost of the dial-up public network can be reduced.

  The best mode for carrying out the present invention is as follows.

  The simple remote monitoring device sends a ping to the wide-area WAN line access router / switching hub in which the simple remote monitoring device is installed at a short interval of several seconds to several minutes, and causes the router / switching hub to fail or recover Is detected immediately, and only when it is detected, is dial-up connected to a dial-up public network prepared separately from the wide area WAN line and notified to the information collecting server. Therefore, failure information is accumulated in the server from all the simple remote monitoring devices distributed and installed at the monitoring target bases. If the simple remote monitoring device itself fails, monitoring of the monitored device cannot be performed, and each simple remote monitoring device has a few minutes or several numbers to prevent the monitoring target device from failing or being unable to transmit recovery information. The keep-alive information indicating that the simple remote monitoring apparatus itself is normal is sent to the server in an e-mail format using the wide area WAN line at a sufficient interval. Furthermore, since the server stores and edits failure information and keep alive information from all simple remote monitoring devices as Web public information and displays it, a router accessing the wide area WAN of the base that the user wants to check from the WWW browser terminal / The operating status of the switching hub can be checked in real time.

  The configuration and operation of the embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an overall configuration of a remote monitoring system in a network environment according to the present embodiment. Referring to FIG. 1, a plurality of user bases 10 such as a business office or a branch of a company use a wide area WAN line 20. Each user base 10 is provided with a router and a switching hub 1 for accessing the wide area WAN line 20. The router or switching hub 1 for accessing the wide area WAN line 20 is provided with a LANTA 2 or a DUS (not shown) for the interface of the access line 200 with the wide area WAN line 20.

  The LAN 3 of each user base 10 is connected to a router or switching hub 1 for accessing the wide area WAN line 20. A simple remote monitoring device 4 is installed in each user base 10.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of the simple remote monitoring device 4. The simple remote monitoring device 4 includes a LAN interface 403 and a PCMCIA card interface 404.

  The PCMCIA card interface 404 can freely select a dial-up line using an expansion card such as an ISDN line TA card or a telephone line modem card. Further, the simple remote monitoring device 4 includes an external rechargeable battery 406 for driving, and thus can operate independently even during a power failure. Here, the rechargeable battery 406 is shown as an external function of the main body of the simple remote monitoring device 4 in FIG. 3, but may be built in the main body.

  Furthermore, the simple remote monitoring device 4 is a small-sized information processing device that does not have a built-in hard disk and can be driven by a battery, and includes a central processing unit 401, a flash memory 402, a power supply unit 405, and the like.

  Further, referring to FIG. 1, all the simple remote monitoring devices 4 are connected to the access line 100 of the dial-up network 30 via the PCMCIA card 5. The LAN interface 403 of the simple remote monitoring device 4 may be connected to a vacant LAN port of the LAN 3 in the user base 10 to be monitored.

  An information providing server 6 having a function of collecting information from all the simple remote monitoring devices 4 is connected to the dialup network 30. The information providing server 6 is installed in a monitoring center 50 that operates the entire system. The information providing server 6 is a Web server function that provides information such as the failure occurrence status of the monitoring target device detected by the simple remote monitoring device 4 or an e-mail for the purpose of keep-alive transmission sent by the simple remote monitoring device 4 It has various functions necessary for operating the monitoring center 50 such as a server function.

  The Web browser terminal 7 obtains information such as the failure occurrence status of the monitoring target device detected by the simple remote monitoring device 4 in real time by accessing the Web site of the information providing server 6 via the Internet 40. be able to.

  The operation of the remote monitoring system in the network environment in the embodiment configured as described above will be described with reference to FIG.

  First, the simple remote monitoring device 4 polls at least a router or switching hub 1 for accessing the wide area WAN line 20 at a short time interval of several tens of seconds. Polling for confirming whether or not there is a processing request for the target device is performed by the simple remote monitoring device 4 sending a ping packet from the LAN interface 403 through the route P1 shown in FIG. 1, or as shown in FIG. The simple remote monitoring device 4 may relay the wide area WAN access line 200 to the network device (not shown) such as the head office or the higher-level base that is the communication destination of the user base to be monitored by the route P2. .

  Next, when the polling result does not reach the ping packet and the connection cannot be confirmed, the simple remote monitoring device 4 connects to the dial-up network 30 only when the recovery can be confirmed thereafter, and the monitoring target device Is notified to the information providing server 6. Note that the determination of device failure or recovery may be made by confirming that there is no change in a plurality of consecutive polling results.

  Further, when the simple remote monitoring device 4 itself fails, the information providing server 6 displays the status of the simple remote monitoring device 4 itself in order to avoid that the information providing server 6 determines that all the monitoring targets are normal. Need to be notified. As a method for this, the simple remote monitoring device 4 itself can notify the normality of the simple remote monitoring device 4 by periodically sending keep-alive packets to the information providing server 6. However, if the keep-alive packet is transmitted via the dial-up network 30, a line usage fee for the dial-up network 30 is generated, which is not economical.

  Therefore, the simple remote monitoring device 4 itself transmits a keep alive packet to the information providing server 6 of the monitoring center 50 via the wide area WAN line 20 and the Internet 60 as a mail packet. The e-mail format is used because the firewall has an open TCP port for mail and can freely communicate with external networks. The keep-alive mail path is as indicated by K1 to K3 in FIG.

  Here, the destination address of the keep-alive mail from the simple remote monitoring device 4 is the address of the information providing server 6, but the mail relay server (not shown) to be used uses the wide area WAN line 20 to be monitored. Use the user's. In addition, when a company uses a dedicated line as an Internet access line, communication costs are not incurred for transmission of keep-alive packets, and costs are reduced.

  Furthermore, since the simple remote monitoring device 4 is operated by a rechargeable battery, even if the base where the simple remote monitoring device 4 is installed fails, the simple remote monitoring device 4 alone for a predetermined period. Therefore, it is possible to determine the abnormality of the monitoring base.

  The monitoring center 50 may require remote connection for maintenance of the simple remote monitoring device 4 such as polling period or polling destination change. In this case, the ISDN is used as the dial-up network 30 so that the closed connection service and the caller ID check function can be used. When the telephone network is used, the callback connection and PPP (Point To Point Protocol) are used. Security can be ensured by using CHAP (Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol) or PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) which is an authentication protocol.

  The information providing server 6 receives status information of the monitoring target devices monitored by all the simple remote monitoring devices 4. The information providing server 6 edits the information for each user and publishes it as Web information. Since they are grouped in user units, it is possible to facilitate understanding.

  According to the above embodiment, a dedicated monitoring network (dial-up network) is used in addition to a normal wide area WAN line for business use, and a battery-driven simple remote monitoring device is arranged at each monitoring target base. However, since the simple remote monitoring device individually monitors the network equipment in its own site, even if a failure occurs in a business wide-area WAN line including LANTA and DSU, it is accommodated in the wide-area WAN line. The network device in the site that is operating can be reliably monitored, and the failure of the wide area WAN and the failure of the network device installed in the user site can be identified.

  In addition, monitoring results from all simple remote monitoring devices are transferred as monitoring status to the information providing server in the monitoring center using the dedicated monitoring network. You can know the status.

  Also, access to the dedicated monitoring network only when the status of the monitored device has changed, such as when the monitored device has failed or when the failure has been recovered, and the simple remote installed at each site Keep-alive packets sent periodically to display the operating status of the monitoring device use a wide area WAN line and the Internet, and do not use a dedicated monitoring network. The usage fee is significantly less, and an economical system can be realized.

  In addition, since the simple remote monitoring device is individually installed in the base using the wide area WAN line and is individually monitored, the scope of influence is limited to the base even if the simple remote monitoring device fails. So the quality of service is guaranteed. In addition, because the number of destinations for keep-alive packets is small, the transmission cycle can be performed at intervals as short as several tens of seconds, and the failure detection time can be shortened even in a large-scale network with a large number of monitored devices. it can.

  The above-described embodiment is a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and various modifications can be made without departing from the gist of the present invention. For example, the information providing server 6 may be configured by a plurality of servers for each function such as a Web server function and a mail server function.

It is a figure which shows the structure of the system in embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the structure of the simple remote monitoring apparatus in embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the non-delivery cause of the ping packet in a prior art example. It is a figure which shows the structure of the method of monitoring the network using the wide area WAN line in a prior art example.

Explanation of symbols

1 Switching hub 2 LANTA
3 LAN
4 Simple remote monitoring device 5 PCMCIA card 6 Information providing server 7 Web browser terminal 10 User base 20 Wide area WAN line 30 Dial-up network 40, 60 Internet 50 Monitoring center 100, 200 Access line

Claims (2)

A network device connected using a wide area WAN line is monitored by a simple remote monitoring device installed at the same site as the site where the network device is installed, and is shared as a system separately from the simple remote monitoring device. A remote monitoring system including a server to be used,
The simple remote monitoring device includes failure detection means for detecting failure occurrence information and failure recovery information of the network device to be monitored;
The failure occurrence information and failure recovery information are transmitted via a dial-up public network prepared separately from the wide area WAN line used only when the failure occurrence information and failure recovery information detected by the failure detection means are detected. Fault information transmitting means for transmitting to the server;
Keep alive information sending means for sending the keep alive information for displaying the normality of the simple remote monitoring device to the server in an e-mail format periodically using the wide area WAN line;
With
The server includes receiving means for receiving the failure occurrence information and failure recovery information transmitted from all the simple remote monitoring devices via a dial-up public network prepared separately from the wide area WAN line;
Receiving means for receiving the keep-alive information sent from all the simple remote monitoring devices in the e-mail format via the wide-area WAN line;
Display means for displaying the failure occurrence information and failure recovery information transmitted from all the simple remote monitoring devices so that a WWW browser user can browse;
A remote monitoring system comprising:   2. The remote monitoring system according to claim 1, wherein the simple remote monitoring device includes a rechargeable battery driving unit that functions independently even when a site where the simple remote monitoring device is installed is a power failure. 3.

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