Method and apparatus for efficient reactive monitoring

• US 8,402,129 B2
• Filed: 03/21/2001
• Issued: 03/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Raz, Danny, Dilman, Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): BILGRAMI, ASGHAR H
• Application Number:
  US09/813,415
• Publication Number:
  US 20020138599A1
• Time in Patent Office: 4,381 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/203, 709/224, 709/229, 709/225
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/00 Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0681 Configuration of triggering conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/147 for predicting network behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0882 Utilisation of link capacity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/103 with adaptive polling, i.e. dynamically adapting the polling rate
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10015 Access to distributed or replicated servers, e.g. using brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer

Abstract

A technique for managing network elements significantly reduces the amount of monitoring related traffic by using a combination of aperiodic polling and asynchronous event reporting. A global resource (e.g., a network of interconnected nodes or resources) is partitioned into a plurality of separate nodes, giving a fixed resource budget to each of the nodes. When any of the nodes exceeds its budget, based upon local monitoring at that node, the node triggers a report, typically sending a message to a central manager. In response, the central manager then and only then issues a global poll of all (or substantially all) of the nodes in the network. A rate based technique can also be used to monitor resource usage at the nodes, and send a message to a central monitoring location only when the rate at which the value of a local variable changes is too high.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring usage of resources allocated to a plurality of nodes of a network, comprising the steps of:

assigning a parameter to each of a plurality of nodes of the network, wherein each parameter is indicative of a rate of change of usage of said resources of the node;

locally monitoring, at each of the nodes, the rate of change of the usage of said resources of the node;

reporting to a centralized management station of the network when the rate of change of the usage of the resources of one of the nodes exceeds a first threshold;

initiating a poll of resources of nodes of the network by the centralized management station in response to reporting from the node or a time interval being exceeded;

determining whether a sum of the currently reported rates of change of usage of node resources, received in response to the poll initiated by the management station, exceeds a second threshold; and

generating an alarm if the sum of the currently reported rates of change of usage of node resources exceeds the second threshold, else updating the time interval.

2. The method of claim 1, further including the step of adjusting the usage of the resources at one or more of said nodes.

3. A method for monitoring usage of a resource in nodes of a network, comprising the steps of:

(a) monitoring usage of the resource in a node to determine when a rate of change of the usage exceeds a first predetermined threshold;

(b) reporting to a management station of the network when the rate of change of the usage exceeds said first predetermined threshold; and

(c) initiating a poll of resources in the nodes of the network by the management station in response to reporting from the node or a time interval being exceeded.

9. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

(d) summing all the reported rate of change of the usage of the resources; and

(e) generating an alarm if the sum exceeds a second threshold, else updating the time interval.

4. A method for monitoring usage of resources in nodes of a network, comprising the steps of:

asynchronous reporting of an event to a management station of the network when a rate of change of a usage of at least one resource of said resources in any of said nodes deviates from a prescribed norm; and

periodic polling of said nodes in accordance with a polling interval, and aperiodic polling of said nodes in response to reporting of said event, wherein a tunable parameter is adjusted in response to the usage.

7. The method defined in claim 4 wherein said nodes are selected from the group consisting of routers, switches, bridges, and firewall devices.

8. The method defined in claim 4 wherein said nodes are selected from the group consisting of servers, hosts, and layer 4-7 switches.

5. A method for managing a global resource of a network in order to reduce the amount of monitoring related traffic, comprising the steps of:

assigning a local threshold to each of a plurality of node resources of a respective plurality of nodes of the network;

reporting to a management station of the network when a value indicative of node resource usage exceeds the assigned local threshold as determined using local monitoring of the node resource;

initiating a poll, by the management station, of node resource usage by the nodes of the network in response to a determination that a sum of previously reported values indicative of node resource usage received from reporting nodes plus an upper bound of node resource usage for non-reporting nodes exceeds a threshold; and

generating an alarm if the sum of the currently reported values indicative of node resource usage, received in response to the poll initiated by the management station, exceeds the threshold.

6. A method for managing a global resource of a network in order to reduce the amount of monitoring related traffic, comprising the steps of:

assigning a local threshold to each of a plurality of node resources of a respective plurality of nodes of the network;

reporting to a management station of the network when a rate of change of usage of said node resource exceeds the local threshold as determined using local monitoring of the node resource, wherein said rate of change of usage of said node resource is determined using a variable time interval comprising a difference between a current time and a time at which the node was last polled by the management station;

initiating a poll, by the management station, of the node resource usage of the nodes of the network in response to receiving reporting from one of the nodes or a time interval being exceeded;

determining whether a sum of the currently reported rates of change of usage of node resources, received in response to the poll initiated by the management station, exceeds a threshold; and

generating an alarm if the sum of the currently reported rates of change of usage of node resources exceeds the threshold.