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Microwave Radio Monitoring

Hello,

I am wondering if it is possible to monitor microwave radio links on Solarwinds. Would this be done in the same process as adding any other node? Is it possible to also gather information such as the RSSI levels, SNR level, TX RX on, QAM settings, transmit / receive freq?

Thanks

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Comments

cnorborg

That all depends on the equipment used in the Microwave link and what information it offers up via SNMP or maybe API. I don't think its available, but lets say the transmitter was a card in a Cisco router, you would probably have the information easily available via normal polling. But, lets say the transmitter equipment gave you an ethernet data link that you plugged into an ethernet port on the router (more likely), then you would only get from that basic ethernet statistics. If it was in bridged mode (very likely) you wouldn't get anything else.

However, if the transmitting equipment either acted as a router and had its own IP and offered up stats via SNMP, you could monitor that also. Or, if it had a separate management port where you could get this, you could monitor it that way. Let's say one of these was the case, but Solarwinds maybe picked up things like the packets and such, but not the other metrics you want. Odds are, there will probably be other MIBS you can poll via a custom poller that would allow you to get this information. You'd have to set up a custom poller, and probably some custom resources or reports to display this info, but definitely do-able.

Let's say the transmitter is operated by an operator who runs the microwave link for you. Even if the equipment they use it capable of giving you this info, unless they give you access to the equipment via SNMP, you'd be out of luck. So, if you are having a vendor do the operations for you, make sure its in the contract you have with them to give you access to these statistics. Don't just take their verbal agreement to do it as good enough! Why? Quite often these companies either sell off the circuits they operate to another vendor, or get bought out by another company who will take them over. If its not in your contract, you might get locked out after having access for years…

HTH!

planglois

Short answer: yes. Long answer: there are pre-requisites (like SNMP access), and requires you to create UnDP pollers, and you'll have to create your own report widgets to display the information properly. It's not going to be out-of-the-box polling like you would do for a standard router.

I've done it for Nokia (Wavence) MW and some SCADA-type radios too.

naveensingh43

Yes — you add the microwave radio as an SNMP node using the same process as switches, routers, etc.

Once added, you can extend monitoring by polling specific OIDs via:

Universal Device Pollers (UNDP)

SolarWinds' Universal Device Poller allows you to fetch custom SNMP values from vendor-specific MIBs. UNDP is used when SolarWinds does not natively display certain OID values.
SolarWinds documentation notes that custom values must be polled via MIB/OID using UNDP.

SNMP Component / Custom Pollers

The SNMP Monitor in SAM can retrieve any MIB entry by OID.

stuartd

Simply put, yes you can if the manufacturer of the device you want to monitor provides that capability.

We monitor several types of radio and and also microwave links for some of our clients via SNMP.