JUNOS® FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter 11. Managing Remotely

Once you get your network up and running, you probably want to leave the lab and enjoy some time away from the wiring closets and fan noise. To safely leave your routers running, you have to be able to access and manage them remotely. This chapter describes how you access the routers, explaining everything from the physical interface that you use through the different monitoring tools that make it easy to monitor your router remotely.

Choosing an Interface

The most basic requirement of managing your router without having to physically be next to the router is having an interface through which you can communicate. So the question is, "Which interface do you want to use?"

Well, maybe the better question is, "Which interface can you use?" You have a couple of choices here depending on how you want to manage your network. And, of course, you have different options depending on your management requirements and the type of router you have. These choices boil down to two important questions:

• Do you want to use your network-facing interfaces or a specialized management interface?

• Do you need to access the router with root permissions?

The most basic decision you need to make when looking at how to remotely manage your router is whether you want that management to be out-of-band or in-band. So what's the difference?

• Out-of-band management identifies remote management through a network that is separate from the traffic-carrying network on which the router is deployed. ...