Electrical and Computer Engineering Department-College of Engineering-Sultan Qaboos University
Enterprise network monitoring & evaluation using Free/open source software:
SQU as a case study
Khalil Ibrahim AL-Maawali
Abstract
Networks based on Internet protocol (IP) are widely and rapidly continue to grow. Relying on
these networks is rising every day, managing and keeping them running with minimum outage
time becomes an extremely challenging task. Minimizing outage time of the network needs nonstop 24/7 monitoring. As a result, dependency on automated network monitoring solutions has
increased.
Many computerized network monitoring tools and systems are available, including expensive
proprietary/closed-source commercial solutions and Free Open Source software (FOSS) systems.
Three of the most popular FOSS network monitoring systems are Nagios,Opennms and Zabbix.
They are considered to be solid competitors to the available proprietary solutions. Evaluation
discussions about these three FOSS solutions are very common between IT professionals and
FOSS communities in the Internet.
Methods of this MS research work start with literature review on network monitoring
functionalities and the selected FOSS monitoring solutions. Then, explore Sultan Qaboos
University (SQU) network and select some study cases, which can be used as a base to evaluate
and compare selected FOSS solutions.
The study’s main scope is providing evaluation of the selected system, and then proposing one
FOSS system which can be used as common monitoring system for SQU network. It can help also
to detect any network issues in SQU and suggest solutions.