A
Network Management System (
NMS) developed by the
Merit NOC (www.merit.edu), Rover (more properly, Internet Rover) uses two
daemons to run specific tests on a given list of
network nodes. The first
daemon is
pingd. This provides a single test - a simple
ICMP Echo (more generally known as a "
ping", hence the name) to the target
nodes. The second, more complex,
daemon is called
InetRoverd. This
daemon will test any given
TCP port (with specific, named tests for
telnet,
smtp,
named, and
gopher), as well as running a disk usage check against servers listed in the
hostfile, and checking to see if a given file exists on those servers. If any of the tests fail, Rover will throw an alert notice onto its display (which runs in a simple
vt100 terminal) and make an entry in its
logfile. The list of
nodes is given in a
plaintext file, with each
node having a line which documents its
IP address, a short description of the
node, and what test (or tests) should be run against that
node.
Given the simplicity of configuration combined with its ability to run in text-only environments, it isn't surprising that Rover is so popular. When one combines these benefits with the fact that it is freely available, it is nearly the perfect NMS. The only major drawbacks are the lack of SNMP polling ability, and the fact that each hostfile has a maximum size of 2000 entries. The reason for this is that the daemons continually iterate over the hostfile, and anything over 2000 entries would cause an unacceptable delay in reporting problems on the network.