Generic Firewall monitoring and management plugin
Verax NMS Generic Firewall management plugin allows easy monitoring, alerting, health check, management and
performance reporting of SNMP-enabled firewalls supporting the following MIBs:
- BRIDGE
- ENTITY-MIB (optional)
The Generic Firewall plugin can communicate using SNMP v1, v2 or v3.
Generic vs. dedicated plugins
The Generic Firewall plugin enables monitoring and management of firewall types/models that do not have dedicated Verax NMS plugins
(such as, for instance Juniper firewall).
Dedicated plugins come first in the discovery order: if a dedicated plugin exists it is preferred over a generic one.
While the dedicated plugins typically provide additional functionality (display more information, allow for execution of management actions,
configuration management, etc.),
the Generic Firewall plugin provides full capability in terms of monitoring, performance measurements and alerting.
General view
The view presents general configuration information about a firewall such as:
-
Firewall vendor, model and firmware information
-
Name, uptime, location and administrative contact details
-
Interfaces' operational statistics (e.g. numbers of up/down events)
Internet protocol (IP) view
The view displays current IP configuration parameters (such as forwarding, default TTL, reassembly timeout and others)
and statistics (input receives, forwarded datagrams, routing discards and others).
Interfaces view
The view provides an inventory of all network interfaces on a device including:
-
Index and name (e.g. FastEthernet0/0)
-
Type (e.g. ethernetCsmacd)
-
Physical address
-
Administrative and operational statuses
-
Current configuration parameters (e.g. MTU size) and statistics (e.g. packets out, excessive collisions) for each interface
IP addressing view
This view provides a list of all IP addresses configured on a device including: address, mask, interface and broadcast address.
Routing table view
The view displays current IP routing table on a device including:
-
Destination IP address
-
Next hop interface and IP address
-
Route type and type dependent metrics (1 through 5)
-
Protocol describing how the route was learned
-
Age describing how long ago (in seconds) the route was created/modified
This information is displayed only if a firewall has routing functionality.
Entities view
The view provides detailed information about hardware (entities) on a device including:
-
Name (e.g. motherboard, daughter card slot, chassis, FastEtnernet card, etc.) and description
-
Containment information (e.g. card A is inserted into slot B)
-
Entity class indicating hardware type (e.g. port, module, container, etc.)
-
Hardware, firmware and software revision numbers
-
Manufacturer, model name and serial number
-
Replaceable flag indicating if given piece of hardware is considered to be a FRU (Field Replaceable Unit) or not
This information is only displayed if the device supports the SNMP ENTITY-MIB.
Standard MIBs
The Generic Firewall supports the standard MIB-2, enabling NMS to define sensors, performance counters, alarms and traps based on
standard MIB definitions.
Built-in vendor templates
The Generic Firewall plugin contains predefined templates for sensors and performance counters defined in
proprietary MIBs of the most popular vendors including Cisco, Fortinet, Netscreen and others.
Loading vendor MIBs
Additional MIBs can be loaded via NMS MIB Browser. OIDs from these MIBs can be used to define additional
sensors and performance counters as needed.
Predefined Generic Firewall monitoring templates
The plugin contains predefined templates for most commonly monitored firewall items.
Most important, selected templates are provided in the table below (other, additional sensors and performance counters
can be added by the user):
| Generic Firewall Interface Input Traffic |
| Generic Firewall Interface Output Traffic |
| Generic Firewall Interface Inbound Non-unicast Packets |
| Generic Firewall Interface Outbound Non-unicast Packets |
| Generic Firewall Interface Traffic Ratio |
| Generic Firewall Interface Unicast Ratio |
| Generic Firewall Interface Discarded Packets Ratio |
| Generic Firewall Interface Packets With Errors Ratio |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Receives |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Headers Errors |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Address Errors |
| Generic Firewall IP Forwarded Datagrams |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Unknown Protocols |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Discards |
| Generic Firewall IP Input Delivers |
| Generic Firewall IP Output Requests |
| Generic Firewall IP Output Discards |
| Generic Firewall IP Output No Routes |
| Generic Firewall IP Reassembly Received Fragments |
| Generic Firewall IP Reassembly OKs |
| Generic Firewall IP Reassembly Fails |
| Generic Firewall IP Fragmentation OKs |
| Generic Firewall IP Fragmentation Fails |
| Generic Firewall IP Fragmentation Creates |
| Generic Firewall IP Routing Discards |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Messages |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Errors |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Destination Unreachs |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Time Exceeds |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Parameter Problems |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Source Quenches |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Redirects |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Echos |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Echo Replies |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Timestamps |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Timestamp Replies |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Input Address Mask Request Replies |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Messages |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Errors |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Destination Unreachs |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Time Exceeds |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Parameter Problems |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Source Quenches |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Redirects |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Echos |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Echo Replies |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Timestamps |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Timestamp Replies |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Address Masks Requests |
| Generic Firewall ICMP Output Address Mask Request Replies |
| Generic Firewall TCP Active Opens |
| Generic Firewall TCP Passive Opens |
| Generic Firewall TCP Attempt Fails |
| Generic Firewall TCP Closes |
| Generic Firewall TCP Current Established |
| Generic Firewall TCP Input Segments |
| Generic Firewall TCP Output Segments |
| Generic Firewall TCP Retransmitted Segments |
| Generic Firewall TCP Input Errors |
| Generic Firewall TCP Output RSTs Flags |
| Generic Firewall UDP Input Datagrams |
| Generic Firewall UDP No Application At Port |
| Generic Firewall UDP Input Errors |
| Generic Firewall UDP Output Datagrams |
Performance counters and alarming
All the above parameters can be added as sensors/performance counters within Verax NMS and configured for alarming.
Event processing
Verax NMS provides a set of standard, built-in event processing rules for MIB-2. Additional rules can be defined
based on standard and vendor-specific MIB OIDs.
See also
Generic Router monitoring and management plugin 
Generic Switch monitoring and management plugin
Generic Printer monitoring and management plugin
Generic UPS monitoring and management plugin
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