🚀 Network Monitoring System

A fully automated network monitoring system that detects network failures (packet loss, high latency, link failures), alerts you via Slack & Email, and performs auto-remediation using Python, Netmiko, and Shell scripts. It also provides a REST API and Prometheus-Grafana integration for real-time monitoring and dashboards.

📌 Features

• 📡 Pings and monitors multiple network nodes automatically
• 🔁 Detects:
  • Packet loss
  • Latency issues
  • Link down or host unreachable
• 🚨 Alerts via:
  • Slack API
  • Email (SMTP)
• 🧠 Auto-remediation:
  • Restarting network services
  • Sending commands via Netmiko
• 📊 Real-time metrics:
  • Prometheus metrics exporter
  • Grafana dashboards
• 🌐 REST API for live status of devices

🧾 Project File Structure

Auto-Network-Monitoring/
├── monitor.py                # Main monitoring script
├── api.py                    # Flask API to check device status
├── slack_alerts.py           # Slack webhook alert handler
├── email_alerts.py           # Email alerting script
├── remediation.sh            # Shell script to restart network services
├── requirements.txt          # Python dependencies
├── prometheus.yml            # Prometheus config
├── .gitignore                # Git ignored files
├── README.md                 # Project documentation
└── exporters/
    └── metrics_exporter.py   # Prometheus metrics exporter

🖥️ System Workflow

🔍 How Each File Works

monitor.py

This script is the core monitoring engine. It performs the following actions:

• Loops over a predefined list of network devices every 60 seconds.
• Pings each device to check its reachability.
• If a device is detected as down:
  • Sends out alerts via configured channels (Slack, Email).
  • Logs the failure event for record-keeping.
  • Attempts to perform automated remediation actions using Netmiko (for network devices) or a fallback shell script.

---

api.py

This file sets up a Flask web server to provide an API endpoint for checking the status of any monitored device. Example Request: To check the status of the device with IP 192.168.1.1, you would send a GET request to /status/192.168.1.1.

GET /status/192.168.1.1
Example Response:

JSON

{
  "ip": "192.168.1.1",
  "status": "up"
}

slack_alerts.py

This script is responsible for sending alert notifications to a specified Slack channel. It uses a Slack webhook URL to post messages.

email_alerts.py

This script handles sending alert notifications via email. It uses a Gmail SMTP server. You will need to customize this file with your Gmail credentials (email address and an app password for security).

remediation.sh

This is a shell script designed as a fallback remediation method. It attempts to restart network services like NetworkManager using systemctl. This script is executed if Netmiko-based remediation is not applicable or fails.

exporters/metrics_exporter.py

This script exposes custom metrics in a format that Prometheus can scrape.

It runs a small HTTP server on port 8000. It tracks the reachability status of each device: 0 indicates the device is OK (up), and 1 indicates the device is down.

⚙️ Setup & Deployment

🧱 Install dependencies: Open your terminal and run the following command to install all necessary Python libraries listed in the requirements.txt file. Bash

pip install -r requirements.txt

🛠 Configure your devices in monitor.py: Edit the monitor.py file to define the list of devices you want to monitor. Each device is a dictionary with its host (IP address or hostname), username, password, and device_type(e.g., cisco_ios, juniper_junos).

devices = [
    {"host": "192.168.1.1", "username": "admin", "password": "admin", "device_type": "cisco_ios"},
    {"host": "10.0.0.5", "username": "user", "password": "password123", "device_type": "linux"},
    # Add more devices here
]

🔐 Set up your credentials: email_alerts.py: Open this file and enter your Gmail email address and an app password. (Using app passwords is more secure than using your main Google account password).

slack_alerts.py: Open this file and replace the placeholder Slack webhook URL with your actual webhook URL.

🔄 Run Monitoring Script: Start the main monitoring process by executing:

python monitor.py

🌐 Run API server (Optional): If you want to use the API to check device statuses, run the Flask server in a separate terminal:

python api.py

📈 Prometheus + Grafana Integration

This setup allows you to visualize the network monitoring data.

Prometheus Setup: Install Prometheus: Download and install Prometheus from the official website if you haven't already. Configure Prometheus: Replace the contents of your prometheus.yml configuration file with the following. This tells Prometheus to scrape metrics from the metrics_exporter.py script.

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'network_monitor'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:8000'] # Assumes metrics_exporter.py is running on the same machine

Start Prometheus: Navigate to your Prometheus directory in the terminal and start it with the new configuration:

./prometheus --config.file=prometheus.yml

📊 Grafana Setup

Connect Grafana to Prometheus

1. Install Grafana if you haven't already.
2. Open Grafana in your web browser: http://localhost:3000
3. Add Prometheus as a data source, pointing it to your Prometheus server: http://localhost:9090

Create a New Dashboard

1. In Grafana, create a new dashboard.

2. Add a panel and use a PromQL query to display the status.
   Example to track packet loss (where 1 means down) for a specific device:

   network_packet_loss{device_ip="192.168.1.1"}
   

🔁 Auto-Remediation Logic

The system attempts to automatically fix issues when a device goes down.

Netmiko (Primary Method — monitor.py)

For devices that support SSH access and are compatible with Netmiko (e.g., Cisco IOS, Juniper Junos), monitor.py can send commands like reload or other custom-defined commands to attempt recovery.

Shell Script (Fallback Method)

If Netmiko is not suitable or fails, the remediation.sh script is executed:

bash remediation.sh

🧪 Sample Alert Output

Slack Message

You will receive a message in your configured Slack channel similar to:

ALERT: 192.168.1.2 is down or has high latency.

Email Subject

Emails will have a subject line like:

Network Alert

The email body will contain more details about the downed device.

🌐 REST API

The api.py script provides a simple REST API to query device status.

Route	Method	Description
/status/<ip>	GET	Returns the current status (up or down) of the device.

🧠 Future Improvements

Potential enhancements for this project include:

• SNMP Trap Integration: Receive and process SNMP traps from network devices for more proactive monitoring.
• Web Dashboard: Develop a dedicated web dashboard (beyond Grafana) for a live view of device statuses and logs.
• Store Logs to Database: Implement logging to a persistent database (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, InfluxDB) for better querying and historical analysis.
• Kubernetes & Docker Compose Deployment: Create configurations for easier deployment and scaling using containerization technologies.

🙌 Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

• For minor changes, feel free to submit a pull request.
• For major changes or new features, please open an issue first to discuss the proposed changes.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.

👨‍💻 Author

Shibam Nath
GitHub: shibam120302