Now a days you have to consider a monitor tool or tools that can do the following: 1. Event Correlation (don't page me or turn my entire dashboard red if I lose 2 severs in a 20 server load balanced pool) 2. Application Mapping, dashboards, and portals 3. User experience monitoring mapped to hardware ( eliminate finger pointing and shorten problem identification) 4. Ability to publish reports ( reports tailored to the person's skill level. The higher up the food chain the less they will understand very technical graphs) 5. Historical comparisons (We now have to justify clearly why we need the upgrade or the latest and greatest) 6. On large scale monitoring solution you have to manage your database, all this data can pile up quickly What tool you use is not as important as what you do with the information to quickly resolve issues and provide data on the health of your infrastructure.

Not sure why the Telcos and cable companies are fighting this. They can make a killing in managing these networks. Lets do the math, the city incurs all the cost of building the infrstructure. But, the city will have no experience in managing and maintaing a high speed network. Well the only folks with that kind of experience are the big telcos and cable companies. They can charge hugh fees to montitor and maintain these networks without owning any of the infrastructure.