A distributed architecture for monitoring and controlling geo-distributed computer networks

Geo-distributed dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6), computer networks are systems which allow computers to share information and software/hardware resources. Monitoring and controlling this kind of systems is not a trivial task for a network administrator of a generic organization, who might want to use a distributed network monitoring software tool to efficiently perform it. In order to monitor the real-time geo-distributed network traffic, by constantly sensing the carrier with a network interface card working in promiscuous mode, the tool's architecture has to be distributed too: i.e. a Remote Component must be physically connected in each of the subnetworks and VLANs, forming the organization's network. In addition, all of the information gathered by the latter has to be processed and sent to a Central Collector Component. All of this Components have to be properly designed in order to accomplish the overall task in an efficient a reliable way. This report will describe how to address the latter issue, presenting a distributed architecture for real-time monitoring and controlling geo-distributed dual-stack network, detecting eventual anomalies in it. The proposed architecture has been implemented and it is fully functionally monitoring the campus network of "The CNR Research Area of Pisa". The tool's name is 6MoN.