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This chapter provides information on the use of CiscoView in the following sections:
When you first open CiscoView, the CiscoView main window opens (Figure 1-1).
Many of the menu items are grayed out because you have not opened a device. Once a device is open, a larger window opens showing the front or rear panel of the device. Figure 1-2 shows the main CiscoView window displaying the rear panel of an AS5200 device.
Title bar--Provides the CiscoView application name and the name of the currently connected device.
Menu bar--Allows you to perform CiscoView tasks, including displaying configuration and performance information for devices, cards, and ports; displaying different device representations; and controlling some of the operating characteristics of CiscoView.
Toolbar--Provides a shortcut for entering important CiscoView commands such as print or help, configuration, monitoring information and access to Telnet.
System information--Displays information about the type of device, the Cisco device software that is running, and additional system information. For some devices, CPU utilization is displayed.
Device view--Displays a graphical representation of the rear or front panel of the device. Click in this area to display information about different parts of the device. For example, to display information about the configuration of an Ethernet port on an AS5200 device rear panel, double-click the port or take either of the following steps:
Status bar--Provides a brief description of the currently selected device, interface, or port, and provides ongoing operational status, including polling and error message information.
Device status legend--Provides port status details (Table 1-1):
| Color | Indicates |
|---|---|
| Cyan or greenish blue | Dormant or waiting for an external event, such as having packets to transmit or dialing a remote site |
| Brown | Administratively down |
| Red | Operational failure |
| Yellow | Minor alarm |
| Magenta | Testing |
| Green | Up |
Popup menus--Displays options available for configuring and monitoring a device, card, or port. For more information on popup menus, see "Starting CiscoView and Displaying a Device."
Menus may vary depending on the device you are using. If an option is grayed out, it is not applicable to that device. Table 1-2 and Table 1-3 describe menu items found in the CiscoView File and View menus.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Refresh | Refreshes the current display by checking that all information is current. |
| 50% | Toggles the size of the device display between 50 and 100 percent. |
| Stack | Displays the devices in sequence of their physical order. It is grayed out if the device does not support the stack feature. |
| Front View | Displays the front panel of a device on selected devices only. |
| Rear | Displays the real panel of the device. |
| Logical | Displays the logical modem connections on an AS5200 only. |
The Configure menu varies depending on the device you are using and what you have selected on the device to configure: the device itself, a card or a port. For more information on displaying a device, see "Starting CiscoView and Displaying a Device." Table 1-4 describes the Configure menu.
The Monitor menu varies depending on the device you are using and what you have selected on the device to monitor: the device itself, a card or a port. For more information about displaying a device, see "Starting CiscoView and Displaying a Device." Table 1-5 describes the Monitor menu.
You use the Options menu to change the presentation and operating characteristics of CiscoView. For example, if you wanted to display the toolbar or change the polling frequency, you do it through the Options menu. Table 1-6 describes the Options menu.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Show Toolbar | Display or hide the toolbar to access shortcut commands. |
| Show Legend | Display or hide the legend. |
| Show System Information | Display or hide system information. |
| Properties | Set various operating characteristics, including polling frequency, the number of retries, the timeout interval, the read and write community string, MI1B labels displayed as descriptors or an alias, and where to launch CiscoView--in the same window or a separate one. |
| Debug | Displays troubleshooting information and should be used only in consultation with technical support. Writes the trace for device discovery and status polling to the /tmp/.cvlog. |
| Debug SNMP | Displays all the SNMP2 traffic in encoded form to and from the device and should be used only in consultation with technical support. |
The Admin menu opens on specific devices that have administrative option features. Refer to online help for more information.
Configuration is a process that establishes the characteristics of the devices and services on the network and records this information in the appropriate files. Configuring a device for management means supplying information about the specific device. Once the specific aspects of the device are entered into the system, the system can then identify the device and monitor its performance, and you can manage the device using CiscoView.
You configure devices using CiscoView. See the online help for details about configuring specific devices.
There are several ways to display a CiscoView device including the following:
The CiscoView Open Device window allows you to display a device in CiscoView or to change the currently displayed device. To display information, you need to know the read community name and the write community name. The community string is an SNMP security feature that requires a password to access SNMP features on a host, such as a Cisco router. Community strings can be set to read-only or read-write permission. To display the device, take the following steps:
Step 1 Enter the name or IP address of the device in the Host field that you want to view.
Step 2 Enter the Read Community string in the Read Community field.
Step 3 Enter the Write Community string in the Write Community field.
Step 4 Click OK.
CiscoView displays a front or rear panel of the device. To display information, change configurations, and change community string information at the management window, you need to enter the read/write all password in the read community and write community name fields in this window. If you open the device without a write community string, and need to change device information, you can use the Option>Properties window to reset the community string information.
The display you see when you first enter CiscoView is of the front or rear panel of the device. Click on various parts of this graphic to see what it contains. For example, the AS5200 rear panel is shown in Figure 1-2, and there are numbered callouts. If you click on these numbers, you select different components on the device.
Once you have made a selection on the device, select Configure or Monitor in the CiscoView main window to configure or monitor the device, card, or port.
You can also use the right mouse button to get to a popup menu that allows you to configure or monitor a device, card, or port. For example, if you are using an AS5200 card and need port information, select a port on the display and click the right mouse button. A popup menu opens. Within this menu, select one of the options to configure or monitor the port.
You can print the CiscoView Main window and specify certain printing options. To print the main window, select File>Print.
To print the main window and specify printing options, take the following steps:
Step 1 Select File>Print Setup.
The CiscoView Print Setup window opens.
Step 2 In the Printer Name field, select a printer from the scrolling list, or enter the name of a printer.
Step 3 In the Copies field, enter the number of copies you want to print.
Step 4 In the Orientation field, select the paper orientation for printing by clicking the radio button next to the appropriate orientation format: portrait or landscape.
Step 5 In the Format field, select your printer format type by clicking the radio button next to the appropriate option: Ljet or PostScript. Ljet or LaserJet prints the CiscoView Main window in PCL. PostScript prints the window as a PostScript file. For most low-end printers, use the Ljet option.
Step 6 Click OK to close this window.
Step 7 Click File>Print to print the window display.
You can change some CiscoView operating characteristics, such as the polling frequency or the number of retries, from within the CiscoView application. To change the operating characteristics, take the following steps:
Step 1 In the CiscoView main window, select Options>Properties.
The CiscoView Properties window opens.
Step 2 Enter a value in the Polling Frequency field to change the polling frequency. The default value varies by device. A typical value is every 60 seconds. To disable polling frequency, set the value to zero. If you set the polling frequency below 60 seconds for a number of devices, it may slow down your network. It is advisable to use low polling frequencies in specific testing situations and increase them when you have finished testing. Do not poll faster than every 5 seconds.
Step 3 Enter a new value in the Retries field to change the number of retries. The default value is 3. The retries value indicates how many times CiscoView retries an unresponsive device. In busy networks, SNMP datagrams can be discarded. The Retries value allows the application to continue operation during network problems. A setting of 3 is considered a reasonable value; increase the value if the network is slow.
Step 4 Enter a new value in the Timeout field to change the timeout interval. A timeout indicates the amount of time it takes to reach a device. If it takes longer than the time specified, the device is considered to be either unreachable or down. The interval value is specified in seconds; the default is 3 seconds.
As a guideline, the timeout value should be set to twice the average end-to-end delay in your network. If you have a network with several slow links, you may need to set the timeout to a higher value. If you have only LAN links in your network, a value of 2 seconds is reasonable to account for processing delays and timer accuracy.
In high traffic situations, you may experience timeouts. You should not reduce the polling frequency because this may cause a general error. Increase the timeout interval if you consistently experience timeouts.
Step 5 Click the radio button next to MIB Label translation field to display MIB descriptors instead of text labels. Text labels are the default. MIB descriptors are actual variable names used to manage devices, for example locIfOutBitsSec is output bits per second. MIB textual labels are user-friendly aliases of the MIB descriptor.
Step 6 Enter the read or write community string in the appropriate field. This allows you to enter the write community string for a device after you display the device.
This is useful, for example, if you want to make changes to a device or port setting but did not specify the write community string when you first opened the device display. You can enter the write community string in the Write Community field without exiting and reopening the window.
Step 7 Select the window where you want to launch CiscoView, from the same window or a separate window. The default is separate.
This option allows you to keep the desktop from being cluttered by reusing the existing CiscoView window to display devices.
Step 8 Click OK to have the changes you have made in the Properties window take effect.
Sometimes finding a device on a large network can pose a problem but you can find devices in CiscoView easily once you understand how the information is organized. Topics covered are:
CiscoView displays two primary types of information--configuration information, which includes data such as information about a device chassis, and performance information which includes data such as the number of Ethernet errors during a given period.
Configuration information is displayed in CiscoView Configuration windows. Performance information is displayed in CiscoView Monitor windows, which are sometimes referred to as dashboards.
Configuration and performance information is displayed for devices, cards, and ports.
CiscoView displays different categories of information for each device, card, and port. To see the categories of information that can be displayed for each component type, look at the CATEGORY popup menu on the Configuration or Monitor windows. To display a particular type of information, select the category type.
The dashboard monitor displays various types of network performance information, such as poll utilization errors. The display varies, depending on the type of type of device and whether or not is a device or a port, but consists of dials or stripcharts (Figure 1-3). Each display represents information provided by a MIB variable, with the common meaning indicated above the display.
Within the dashboard monitor, you can use a grapher tool to present performance in graph form. To start the graphing tool for the network management platform, select a graphical display in the dashboard and click on the Grapher button. You can use all the features of the graphing tool when you are troubleshooting performance problems. The network management platform graphing tool cannot support the graphing of multiple MIB variables in one data set. If the graphical display selected consists of such formulas, the following error message appears:
Sorry, can't graph formulas.
For some devices, CiscoView allows you to select multiple ports. You can display configuration or performance information for multiple ports or port groups in one window. The entries that can be modified are displayed in pink. Figure 1-4 shows the table for three of the ports of an AS5200 card.
To get a CiscoView table, take the following steps:
Step 1 Select multiple ports by clicking on them as you hold down the Shift key.
Step 2 Click on Configure or Monitor in the CiscoView main window.
A CiscoView table with all the ports you selected listed in the first column appears and the information displayed in tabular format.
You can add, delete, or modify entries from the table. Table 1-7 describes how to make edits to CiscoView Tables.
Context-sensitive online help provides you with step-by-step instructions on how to use CiscoView applications. The online help system also provides a glossary and keyword search capability. Table 1-8 provides a quick guideline to access help from different places.
| For Information About | Do This |
|---|---|
| The help system for specific products | Select Help>Contents |
| How to use the help system | Select Help>Using Help |
| How to use CiscoView features | Select Help>Using CiscoView |
| Current CiscoView versions | Select Help>About CiscoView |
| The current device package version | Select Help>About CiscoView |
| How to display configuration and performance, dashboard windows, and field descriptions | Click Help in the dialog window |
| How to change a component value | Press the Help button over the field |
| How to use help view | Select Help>On Help |
You can use jumps and popups in the help system. Click on a highlighted underlined topic to jump to a help window specific to that topic. When you jump to another topic, you have to click Back on the menu bar to go back to the previous help topic. Click on a dotted underlined term to open a popup help window, which provides a definition of that term. When you go to a popup window, press Return to return to your previous help topic.
The Help Contents Tab has three functional tabs:
For information about using this table select Help>On Help.
Each help window has a menu bar and a button bar. The menu bar provides standard help functions for printing help topics, copying and pasting text from help topics, making online notes about particular help topics, and placing bookmarks.
The button bar provides the following buttons:
Many help windows have Overview and See Also links in the help window topics. You can select the Overview link to obtain background information for the procedure described in the current help window. Select the See Also link to display a list of related topics and go directly to those topics from the current help window.
Select File>Exit on the menu bar in the Help window to exit Help.
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