Big Brother Probes

Intermapper can act as a Big Brother server. Big Brother has been a popular network monitoring tool that allows you to create scripts ("clients") that run on remote systems and send status reports back to the Big Brother server. This allows a network manager to test additional kinds of network devices, either by writing scripts or by using some of the many scripts that are already available.

NOTE:  Big Brother was created by two developers who later joined Quest Software, continuing to work on the product. In 2012, Quest Software was purchased by Dell. (Source: Wikipedia.)

All available support information about Big Brother provided by Dell can be found at Dell's Big Brother page. Dell does not appear to provide client binaries, but you may be able to find them at one of the software distribution sites. A lot of additional information, including potential sources of binaries and source code, is at the Wikipedia link above.

Using the Big Brother Probe

When you specify a device to be tested with a Big Brother probe, Intermapper's built-in Big Brother server listens for messages coming from a Big Brother client on the corresponding machine.

To configure Big Brother probe, you need to set the following parameters:

  • Port - the default port is 1984, but you may choose a different port. If you choose a different port, make sure that the Big Brother client on the corresponding machine is also configured for the same port.
  • Purple Time - the number of minutes to wait without a report before indicating a problem. In an actual Big Brother server, this is thirty minutes; Big Brother shows a device as purple if it goes this long without reports from the device. Intermapper shows it as DOWN (blinking red).

In order for Intermapper to receive Big Brother messages from the remote client, it must be configured correctly. In particular, the client must be configured so that its BBDISPLAY is set to the IP address of the machine where Intermapper is running.

The Big Brother states will be mapped to Intermapper states as shown in the table below:

Big Brother State Intermapper Status
Okay (green) Okay (green)
Attention (yellow) Warning (yellow)
Trouble (red) Critical (red)

At the moment, the only messages that Intermapper processes and represents are status and combo messages.

NOTE: The Big Brother server for a given port does not start until at least one device has been configured for that port. Similarly, once the last device for that port has been removed, the server for that port shuts down.