Error control (EC) is a very powerful feature that helps you quickly locate a problem, prevents superfluous Alerting and incorrect interpretation of a problem. EC tries to find the root-cause of a device that doesn’t respond to status requests anymore.

To be more precise, the above means that if a "No response" event occurs for a device, EC tries to find out whether the event is caused by a definite failure of the device itself OR by another device experiencing problems in the chain of devices (network paths) between the station running Monitor one (the "ThisStation" object on the map) and the device!

EC uses the information provided by the network map (connections and device types) to find out which device causes a "No response" event. It is therefore extremely important to set up your network maps as accurately/factually as possible. If a device "A" is physically connected to device "B", draw a link between them on your network map accordingly!

Without Error control

By a failure of Router2, seven devices get the Down status. If alerting by email is enabled, the network manager receives 7 email alerts (worst case) from which 6 are superfluous!

Error control enabled

Only Router2 and PC5 get the "No response" status. All other devices get the "Unknown" status (blue tick). The network manager only receives 2 alert emails.

PC5 gets the Down status because it is not connected to the switch. Monitor one gets no response from PC5 but is unable to determine the root cause of the down event because of the lack of map information (unknown network path) and acts accordingly.

Enabling Error control

Enabling Error control is simple; just add the "ThisStation" object (predefined) to the network map and add a link between the "ThisStation" object and the switch or hub to which it is actually connected. The "ThisStation" object is a special purpose object representing the physical workstation (or server) that runs the Monitor one software and is the key object for the "Error control" feature.