If your Network Management System is not always monitored, a monitor polling alarm should send an alarm to the appropriate person via pager or e-mail. Monitor polling applications are included with HP Openview and Netview 6000, and can be configured with Sun Net Manager. You can customize monitor polling with add-on products like NetLab's Nerve Center. The individual data points returned from monitor polling are not important. The monitor polling application analyzes the data points to generate alarms.
Many problems initially appear as increased error conditions.
They may eventually become hard errors, or they may come across as phantom problems that come and go. Threshold polling detects these escalating error conditions and takes action before performance is severely impacted. To implement threshold polling, decide what MIB variables to poll for. Once you've decided on the threshold MIB variables, establish baseline values for these variables by starting a poll process on the MIB variables. After a week, review the data to determine what values are normal for your router.