7.3 The Remote Monitoring (RMON) Scheme

RMON, remote monitoring, is well-known technology that implements management by delegation. RMON is a standard monitoring specification that enables various network monitors and console systems to exchange network-monitoring data. RMON provides network administrators with more freedom in selecting network-monitoring probes and consoles with features that meet their particular networking needs (Cisco Systems 2003, Clemm 2007).
RMON is basically a special SNMP MIB that enables managers to delegate certain management tasks to so-called RMON probes. The probe can be a system in its own right, such as a management appliance, or it can simply reside on the device, Figure 4 (Clemm 2007).
RMON probes reside near the monitored network elements, sometimes in the devices themselves. They offer functions that include threshold-crossing alerts, periodic polling and statistics collection of performance-related MIB variables, and event filtering and subscription capabilities, all of which are remotely controlled through a MIB (Clemm 2007).