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Potential Pitfall #1: High Costs of Migrating Remote Sites to LAN

The first speedbump you may hit in your SNMP implementation are remote sites that can't be gracefully migrated to LAN.

After you've completed your transport survey, you may find that you have some remote sites that don't fit into Category 4: the existing transport is inadequate for SNMP; there's no available alternative high-bandwidth route; and they can't be economically upgraded to LAN.

Installing LAN transport at these sites can be a significant cost item, one that can cause your SNMP implementation project to go over budget in the first stages.

You could decide simply to not implement SNMP monitoring at these sites for the time being, and go back to them at a later budget cycle.

But postponing your SNMP migration is not really a viable solution, either. It will mean an extended transition period, and during that time you'll have to maintain your legacy monitoring platform to support those sites. And operating two unintegrated platforms is a headache in itself - it means higher maintenance costs, higher training costs, and having to watch multiple screens to stay on top of your network.

But there is a solution. You can install SNMP network elements that can support both LAN and your existing legacy transport. These elements can access your LAN through a dial-up connection to a PPP server, either over a public switched network or a dedicated line.

This solution lets you immediately implement SNMP monitoring at these sites, but you can postpone a LAN upgrade at the site until a later budget cycle. And you're still minimizing equipment costs, because the same equipment supports both LAN and dial-up connections.

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