Distributed Pollers

Porttracker supports the use of distributed pollers to allow for more flexibility, scale and security.

There are several reasons why a distributed architecture may be used instead of a single-appliance solution:

• Scale; distributed pollers operate in parallel, which reduces the time of a polling cycle. Different parts of the network can be assigned to each poller while data remains in a single view. The more pollers that are added, the more the polling time reduces proportionally.
• Security; Pollers use SNMP to gather information from network devices that have been assigned to them. They pass the data back to the database on the master appliance via an encrypted SSH tunnel . Tracking switches in areas of the network that are shielded by firewalls does not require SNMP ports to be opened up on firewalls, rather a poller is placed on the DMZ and a point-to-point SSH tunnel allowed through.
• Service Provider; providers who have more than one "customer" network may want to keep things simple by providing a realm and a poller for each customer, while keeping the data together for centralized but discreet reporting.