This research introduces a framework based on cellular telephony technologies using the wireless application protocol (WAP) and short message service (SMS) to assist effectively in the remote monitoring and control of a computer network and support the connectivity between network and Internet/GSM networks. The proposed system is based on three main parts: computer network monitoring, failure notification and failure control.
Network monitoring relies on two protocols, i.e., ICMP and SNMP to detect nodes failures. Network monitoring uses monitoring module to provide a computer network add-on with a better mean of communication and notification of the significant events in the network. The network monitoring system would provide alerts and notification concerning network performance using ICMP to discover the network node failure. The ICMP provides the maintenance engineer with information designating the failed node ID and failure date. However the SNMP adds extra information related to the failure type.
The remote monitoring station can actively send failure notification messages throughout the SMS module to notify the maintenance engineer through his mobile terminal when an abnormal state occurs.
The failure control comprises an interactive interface between the maintenance engineer and the remote monitoring station that grants the maintenance engineer a Telnet access to control the failure. Control failure uses a WAP module to control and configure the status of the system through a web site. The main objective of this integrated system is to remotely monitor and control the network devices via GSM mobile terminal.
The availability of the remote monitoring system is enhanced by introducing a backup network monitoring station. The backup station takes over control when the primary fails. The backup periodically updates its database according to the database served by the primary. So in case the backup takes over, the database of both stations are almost the same.
The remote network monitoring system has been designed using state of the art technical development environment. Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) is used as programming tool for the project. The system accessed and controlled by Wireless Markup Language (WML) and HTML which are deployed to provide a uniform interface for WAP maintenance engineer.