RFC 2321 (rfc2321) - Page 1 of 6

RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent

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Network Working Group                                         A. Bressen
Request for Comments: 2321                      Cohesive Network Systems
Category: Informational                                     1 April 1998


        RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   A Description of the usage of Nondeterministic Troubleshooting and
   Diagnostic Methodologies as applied to today's complex
   nondeterministic networks and environments.

1. Introduction

   Increasingly, IETF efforts have been devoted to aiding network
   management, troubleshooting, and diagnosis. Results have included
   SNMP, cflowd, and RMON, and ongoing projects at the time of this
   writing include Universal Logging Protocol and Distributed
   Management.  These tools work well within the horizon of
   deterministic situations in which the configuration of the network or
   relevant components is known or can be relatively easily determined.
   They do not well address many problems that are related to the
   complex internetworks we have today, such as:

     o  Networks where the root bridge for a world-wide bridged
        network is suboptimally located, such as under the desk of a
        secretary who kicks off her shoes when she arrives in the
        morning.
     o  Networks where a hub is located adjacent to a monitor that
        emits disruptive RF when displaying certain graphics.
     o  Networks where an ISP and several of their customers use
        network 10.0.0.0 internally and do not hide RIP broadcasts from
        one another.
     o  Networks where gateways are data-sensitive
     o  Networks where vendors inadvertently ship units with
        duplicate MAC addresses to the same end-user or where all users
        have a tool for changing MAC addresses.



Bressen                      Informational
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