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Cisco Network Management Software

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As was mentioned before, NMSs are third-party systems. Due to the

complexity and diversity of network hardware, most vendors have their own
management information base, or MIB, in addition to the standard ones. It
doesn't stop there--Cisco has also created its own line of NMSs, which you
will learn about in the next section.

Cisco Network Management Software

n order to achieve the five previously mentioned purposes of net-

work management software, Cisco uses three software packages:
CiscoWorks 2000, NetSys, and CiscoSecure. By using a combination of
these packages, all five NMS purposes are fulfilled.

CiscoWorks 2000

CiscoWorks 2000 is the latest release of CiscoWorks. Cisco united several dif-
ferent network management packages into one centralized package. The
primary components of CiscoWorks 2000 are Resource Manager Essentials and
CiscoWorks for Switched Internetworks (CWSI). Within CWSI, you find fur-
ther subcomponents: CWSI Campus, CiscoView, Threshold Manager, Traffic
Director, VLAN Director, ATM Director, and UserTracking.

Each of these components fulfills an important role in the overall effectiveness

of CiscoWorks 2000. We will now cover the role and basic functionality of each
component.

Resource Manager Essentials

This component has taken the place of the original CiscoWorks. This portion of
CiscoWorks 2000 is responsible for device inventory, configuration storage and
changes, IOS upgrades and inventory, and some low-level security. It also provides
monitoring functions, such as syslog monitoring.

This application, along with the other elements of CiscoWorks 2000, uses the

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to manage the network.
SNMP provides a way to retrieve device information and system information.
Each device contains several management information base objects, otherwise
known as MIB objects. These objects are simply variables that are assigned val-
ues. When an SNMP agent queries a device, it asks for specified MIB object
values. The device then responds with the corresponding values. Look at the fol-
lowing example to see what we mean.

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