Mesh Network Manager (MNM) is a software application for managing large fleets of Packet Power gateways and monitoring devices. It is primarily intended to be used with installations that do not report to Packet Power's EMX system and feed monitoring data to 3rd party systems via protocols such as SNMP or Modbus. For such installations, MNM provides a centralized, single point of management and monitoring of all Packet Power devices.
Core feature Overview
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Overall network status visibility, including all gateways and wireless nodes
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Key health and state indicators for all gateways and monitoring nodes,
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Centralized gateway and node radio zone migration management, also using the “node ticket”
concept -
Ability to automatically manage change windows through node ticket scheduling, including start
and expiration times
Functionality
Monitoring
MNM continually monitors a set of Packet Power gateways and all wireless monitoring nodes communicating with those gateways and consolidates and updates a single view of the entire system. The information collected by MNM includes:
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Gateway firmware versions
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Gateway radio zone settings
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Monitoring node firmware versions
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Monitoring node radio zones
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Monitoring node communication performance
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Overall wireless network topology (what nodes communicate to what gateways)
All information collected by MNM is accessible via a simple web interface. It can also be easily exported as a single file to be shared with Packet Power technical support staff if necessary.
Change ticket management
MNM incorporates an automated change ticket management system. It allows key maintenance functions, such as firmware upgrades and radio zone changes to be automatically executed, without the user having to worry about the underlying network topology or having to properly sequence multiple change requests. MNM allows users to express 'tickets' as desired end states, e.g. 'upgrade node X to F/W version 5.30' or 'set the radio zone of node A to US.2'. Once a ticket is created, MNM takes care of figuring out what needs to be done for a given ticket and sending the proper sequence of commands to the proper gateways and/or devices. MNM also monitors the progress of tickets, resending commands if necessary and verifying that the stated operations have been executed. MNM allows tickets to be executed within specific time windows - they will begin executing when scheduled and will stop attempting completion once the change window expired. MNM keeps track of progress of all tickets and provides a simple list view of all tickets and their respective states (pending/completed/expired etc.).
Installation
MNM is available as single binary executable files for most common platforms (Windows, iOS, Linux) as well as an integrated appliance running on the Packet Power E4 platform (same form factor as the Packet Power EG4 Ethernet Gateway). Installation instructions are included with each platform-specific distribution.
Licensing
MNM is enabled for Gateways that have an active support contract. It cannot communicate with any gateway that does not have an up-to-date support license.