Author: Vivek Rajagopalan

Recently we received an email from a user saying they were having trouble with IPv6 traps. Hopefully the folks (esp in Japan) who are running IPv6 networks will find this post useful.

Unbrowse SNMP is a passive receiver

Unlike other trap receivers, Unbrowse SNMP performs passive trap reception. It can listen to random traffic and extract only SNMP traps from it. It is not necessary to change the router configuration to send IPv6 traps to the machine running Unbrowse. As long as the trap network traffic is visible to the machine running Unbrowse, things will work. You can use techniques like port spanning to make traps visible to Unbrowse. This allows you to monitor any mix of IPv4 and IPv6 traps, sent by any agent to any manager. All this happens right out of the box!

Note : You can also fallback to the ‘classic mode’ where Unbrowse SNMP acts as a trap receiver daemon. It opens up a UDP socket and listens to traps sent to that socket. Go to : Tools -> Customize -> Trap Console and select “Normal UDP Socket” as the preferred provider.

How to use ?

1 First download and install the latest version of Unbrowse SNMP

2 Install Winpcap from here

3 Start Unbrowse and press the Trap Console button

4 All traps seen by the machine running Unbrowse SNMP will now be shown.

5 You can create agents with IPv6 addresses via Agents->Manage

6 You can also create IPv6 address based filters via Traps->Manage Filters

Feedback welcome via email at : 

We just released a new build of Unbrowse SNMP R1.5.

Apart from bug fixes this release contains some new features:

1. SNMP Poller Charts enhanced

2. Remote Trap browser enhanced

3. MIB packages updated (All the latest Cisco MIBs (30MB), install in 1-click)

SNMP Poller Charts

Unbrowse SNMP already features a very powerful real time poll chart. You can track any number of objects in any number of windows. You can also track the same object from different routers in a single chart.

Figure : Float tiny poll windows on your desktop

The new release makes the poller even more powerful.

Float poller windows outside the Unbrowse SNMP main window. You can leave these little poll windows on the corner of your desktop while you do your other work. How to ? Click on the “Float icon” on the toolbar

Save/Restore state of poller windows : To start a poll you must first select an object you want to track from the walker sheet, then press the “Track” button. Once you have your favorite pollers up and running, you can select “File -> Save Chart State”. This saves everything about the poller including window positions, sizes, objects. Next time you start Unbrowse SNMP, you can just select “File -> Restore Chart State”. Voila ! Everything is back again.

Continuous tracking : Some users leave the poller running for weeks, but they are interested only in the most recent 24 hours or so. You can now adjust the time window. Select “Tools->Customize->Advanced->Walker”. Then adjust the “Poll Chart Time Window  (hours)”. If you want to track only the most recent 2 days, set the value to 48 hours. If you want to track infinitely, set the value to 0 (this is the default)

 

Remote Trap Browser

The SNMP Trap Console allows you to passively monitor SNMP Trap Activity on your network. Unlike other receivers, you do not have to make any changes to your network elements. Just span a port and Unbrowse SNMP can see everything !!

The remote trap console feature allows you to use a web browser to remotely check trap activity. Unbrowse is installed in the data center and connected to a tap or a span port. This feature allows network admins to to view the traps remotely without having to make a trip to the data center.

Figure : Drop down lets you browse all traps

Faster loading : The previous version had upto 8 seconds delay while retreiving a screenful of traps. This was due to a problem with the way the stylesheet was being retrieved. Now, traps load much faster.

Browse traps : In cases, where Unbrowse SNMP has tens of thousands of traps, we want to show the most recent 100. We also want the user to be able to view the others. The new release paginates the HTML page returned. The user can select any page from the drop down list and access those traps.

Download now. This update is free for all current customers of Power Features.

Just when I thought the Cell Processor was the future platform for high performance + low cost CPU intensive applications – there is more hot action in the multicore processor space.

First a note about Sony’s much anticipated cell processor board 

I am disappointed by the low-key launch of the Sony Cell Processor Board at SIGGRAPH 07. More negative news hit us in the form of performance problems with Madden 2008 on the PS3 vs XBox360. Could this be due to the programming complexity ? To top it, Sony/Toshiba/IBM do not seem to promote the cell processor for networking applications.

Tilera founded by MIT Professor-turned-entrepreneur Dr Anant Agarwal announced a 64-core chip called Tile64. 

The Register UK Reports : The Silicon Valley-based start-up’s first product links together 64 RISC-like cores running at up to 1.0GHz. The real magic, however, stems from the five-lane switches used to link each core in an 8X8 grid that provides up to 32 terabits per second of data bandwidth across the whole chip. You end up with a product – Tile64 – that can tear through software threads.

Chip architecture :

A quick look at the chip architecture.

 

1. Tiles are arranged in a 8×8 grid (contrast with the architecture of the Cell Processor which featured two counter rotating rings)

2. An absolutely cool feature is the On Chip Four DDR2 controllers and Dual Gig E On Chip.

3. Each “tile” has a L1 and L2 Cache which should make programming for it somewhat easier. The SPE’s in the Cell Processor do not have these caches, which contribute to the programming complexity.

Networking applications

This is where I am most interested in, the Tilera site claims that

• 10 Gbps Snort® processing
• 20+ Gbps iptables (firewall)
• 20+ Gbps nProbe
• 16 X 16 SAD at 540 MBlocks/s
• H.264 HD video encode for two streams of 720p @ 30 Fps

Tilera explicitly says that the Tile64 chip is most suited for networking. I am going to follow this closely. Currently, Unsniff Network Analyzer with all options turned on (TCP session tracking, PDU analysis, User Objects) is running out of CPU juice around 6-10Mbps. 

What I would be really interested in

The first question is : well how easy is it to program.

Tilera also sells a product called the Multicore Development Environment (MDE) which claims to ease software development.

• iLib standards-based parallel programming library for efficient inter-core communication
  • Socket-like communication
  • Message passing
  • Streaming channels
• Graphical multicore application debugging and profiling

 

Interesting times ahead.

[tags] Tilera, Tile64, Cell Processor, Unsniff multicore [/tags]