NAME

probes::CiscoRTTMonEchoICMP - Probe for SmokePing


SYNOPSIS

 *** Probes ***
 + CiscoRTTMonEchoICMP
 + forks=50
 *** Targets ***
 + MyRouter-PingVictim
 menu = MyRouter->PingVictim
 title = RTTMon ping from MyRouter to PingVictim
 host = PingVictim.foobar.com.au
 ++ PROBE_CONF 
 ioshost = RTTcommunity@Myrouter.foobar.com.au
 iosint = 10.33.22.11
 packetsize = 1024
 tos = 160


DESCRIPTION

A probe for smokeping, which uses the ciscoRttMon MIB functionality (``Service Assurance Agent'', ``SAA'') of Cisco IOS to measure ICMP echo (``ping'') roundtrip times between a Cisco router and any IP address.


PARAMETERS

The (mandatory) host parameter specifies the IP host, which will be pinged by the router. This can be a DNS name, the smokeping host can resolve or a dotted-quad IP address.

The (mandatory) ioshost parameter specifies the Cisco router, which will execute the pings, as well as the SNMP community string on the router.

The (optional) packetsize parameter lets you configure the packetsize for the pings sent. The minimum is 8, the maximum 16392. Use the same number as with fping, if you want the same packet sizes being used on the network. Please note that the packesize must be specified under PROBE_CONF, all other definitions will be ignored. Default is 56 bytes.

The (optional) iosint parameter is the source address for the pings sent. This should be one of the active (!) IP addresses of the router to get results. IOS looks up the target host address in the forwarding table and then uses the interface(s) listed there to send the ping packets. By default IOS uses the (primary) IP address on the sending interface as source address for a ping. The RTTMon MIB versions before IOS 12.0(3)T didn't support this parameter.

The (optional) tos parameter specifies the value of the ToS byte in the IP header of the pings. Multiply DSCP values times 4 and Precedence values times 32 to calculate the ToS values to configure, e.g. ToS 160 corresponds to a DSCP value 40 and a Precedence value of 5. The RTTMon MIB versions before IOS 12.0(3)T didn't support this parameter.


IOS VERSIONS

It is highly recommended to use this probe with routers running IOS 12.0(3)T or higher and to test it on less critical routers first. I managed to crash a router with 12.0(9) quite consistently ( in IOS lingo 12.0(9) is older code than 12.0(3)T ). I did not observe crashes on higher IOS releases, but messages on the router like the one below, when multiple processes concurrently accessed the same router (this case was IOS 12.1(12b) ):

Aug 20 07:30:14: %RTT-3-SemaphoreBadUnlock: %RTR: Attempt to unlock semaphore by wrong RTR process 70, locked by 78

Aug 20 07:35:15: %RTT-3-SemaphoreInUse: %RTR: Could not obtain a lock for RTR. Process 80


INSTALLATION

To install this probe copy ciscoRttMonMIB.pm files to ($SMOKEPINGINSTALLDIR)/lib and CiscoRTTMonEchoICMP.pm to ($SMOKEPINGINSTALLDIR)/lib/probes. V0.97 or higher of Simon Leinen's SNMP_Session.pm is required.

The router(s) must be configured to allow read/write SNMP access. Sufficient is:

        snmp-server community RTTCommunity RW
 
If you want to be a bit more restrictive with SNMP write access to the router, then consider configuring something like this
        access-list 2 permit 10.37.3.5
        snmp-server view RttMon ciscoRttMonMIB included
        snmp-server community RTTCommunity view RttMon RW 2

The above configuration grants SNMP read-write only to 10.37.3.5 (the smokeping host) and only to the ciscoRttMon MIB tree. The probe does not need access to SNMP variables outside the RttMon tree.


BUGS

The probe sends unnecessary pings, i.e. more than configured under ``*** Database ***'' - ``pings'', because the RTTMon MIB only allows to set a total time for all pings in one measurement run (one ``life''). Currently the probe sets the life duration to ``pings''*2+3 seconds (2 secs is the ping timeout value hardcoded into this probe).


SEE ALSO

http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/smokeping/ http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/snmp/perl/

The best source for background info on SAA is Cisco's documentation on http://www.cisco.com and the CISCO-RTTMON-MIB documentation, which is available at: ftp://ftp.cisco.com/pub/mibs/v2/CISCO-RTTMON-MIB.my


AUTHOR

Joerg.Kummer at Roche.com