Alice
Introduction
Alice is a network diagnostic system being developed for a large cable ISP
in Ontario. It is meant to automate certain tasks that are now being performed
manually be the Technical Support Analysts (TSAs).
Alice is essentially a custom web client that features automatic querying,
reporting, and logging of modem statistics. It connects to Cisco routers via
the Looking Glass tools to obtains modem statistics, and presents this information
in a format easily used by the TSAs. In addition it will generate alerts when
certain problem conditions are met, and will maintain a log of network status.
The motivation for the system was to relieve the TSAs of the mundane aspects
of network monitoring, allowing them to concentrate on solving any problems
that might occur.
The prototype system has been in successful operation for several months, and
we are near completion of the project.
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