On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Matthew Huff <mhuff@ox.com> wrote:
The advantage of SMS is that it is out of band. Any smtp or other IP based solution requires a stable and working network environment, which is what the alert may be trying to tell you is down.
Which is why you locate a small NMS outside your network (on a VM somewhere) whose only job is to start alerting when it can't reach the NMS inside your network. That also helps when your interior NMS system gets gummed up or when a general emergency in your locality damages your infrastructure at the same time as the SMS provider's infrastructure. If your monitoring system is structured well to begin with, email has efficacy comparable to sms. A smartphone app expecting heartbeats via your in-band infrastructure has effectiveness superior to both. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> May I solve your unusual networking challenges?