About hives

An agent-based measurement system consisting of one or more CNA agents and one or more CNA servers is called a hive. The CNA servers in the hive:

• Schedule tests between CNA agents.
• Perform agent-based measurement testing, analysis, and alarm notification.
• Analyze, report, and store test results.
• Share the following information for agent-based measurement:
• Security keys
• CNA agents
• Authorized users
• Chatter module configurations. Any configuration change that you make to a Chatter module is immediately communicated to other Chatter modules in the hive.
• Share test results. Each Chatter module shares its test results with other Chatter modules in your network to generate a unified report of the network status. Thus, you see the same agent-based measurement data regardless of the CNA server that you log in to.
• Provide management capabilities for the hive.
• Dynamically generate a map of the network topology by using traceroute tests. The map shows discovered nodes and links that are used by test packets.

More than one hive can monitor your network; however, CNA agents and CNA servers can belong to only one hive. Hives cannot share CNA agents and CNA servers.