RFC 2321 (rfc2321) - Page 1 of 6
RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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