Able to connect Agent to two networks (for out of band signalling)

[DaveC]

Hi folks - I'm new here as we've just started looking at Domotz.

 

Very first feature request - I would love to be able to configure an Agent to connect to two networks for a number of reasons:

• We do big live events where we nearly always have two physical networks for resilience. One might be a fibre private network and the other could be a DSL or FTTC or even a 4G mobile data connection. Would be great to be able to monitor both from a single Agent - still happy to pay two licences of course.
• If a network goes down, you want to know that, but you also want to be able to figure out why? We would want to be able to access an Agent via a second network path and still get info about the LAN side of the failed WAN network, to help diagnose what's gone wrong. How many of us have made a remote router config change and locked ourselves out??? I know I have!! Being able to remote into the router via a second network to fix this would be awesome!

 

So not just multiple VLANs but multiple physical NICs as well.

It's easy enough to add additional NICs using a USB to Ethernet adapter - we've done this on Raspberry Pi's before.

I'm assuming this would be a PRO feature.

 

What do folk think?

 

Regards

 

Dave

 

[Giancarlo]

As discussed with our support team, we are taking this into consideration in our backlog of new features to be implemented. 

[OPSoftware]

We would second this, we run a similar setup for live events but in our case we tend to be in  the middle of nowhere running internet over multiple bonded satellite connections.

 

We find that due to the increased latency of the sat links (700ms +) the agent has issues with this when monitoring up links.

 

We also run redundant physical networks and multiple VLANs on both so being able to monitor both networks and understanding where a failure occurred and why would be a great addition.

 

Regards,

 

Ozan Pakyuz, MCSE:PI, MCSE:DI, MCSE:SI, PRINCE2

IT Director

OP Software Ltd.

[DaveC]

That's very interesting Ozan.

We are also using IP Satellite links at times with latencies in the range of 700ms.

We use the EuropaSat Tooway system that uses ViaSat hardware.

If there are issues with high latency connections then I will also flag that up to tech support since we need it to work OK in that environment.

Regards

Dave

[SpivR]

A related use would be to configure a cellular data modem as the second LAN.  Either by directly supporting USB plug-in cellular modems (a potential driver/support nightmare) or by allowing an external cellular hotspot or ethernet-to-cellular bridge to be connected vi a second Ethernet.

 

This would allow more critical installations to provide a back-channel over cellular for alerts, monitoring, and control when the primary ISP link goes down.