The RailRoad's Netmon Application is a very unique and powerful network tool used to monitor several very different types of electronic monitoring and control systems. As recently as two years ago, there existed no other off-the-shelf solutions suitable for the RailRoad's considerable requirements.
In the late 1980's, the Burlington Northern developed its own application, called "Eunis" or "Netmon", to monitor their nationwide PBX system. It performed well enough for them to be able to tie in several other systems, which were eventually added to it. Today this application allows the BNSF to monitor several important monitoring and control systems, including(among others, I'm sure):
Netmon is actually a large set of Unix programs(well over 100 of them) written in C and C++. The back-end database stores real-time information on all monitored systems, while the front-end GUI(graphical user interface) allows interactive queries, acknowledgements, and resets right from the desktop.
An Openlook frame is used in conjunction with the DataViews ® graphics package to provide the graphics capabilities of the application. A simple click on one of the lighted line segments on the top map allows one to view a graphical representation of the realtime status of electrical and electronic hardware devices at remote locations:
In 1995, as a response to the large number of critical processes in Netmon, Tom Brusehaver wrote a Network Monitor-monitor , and called it "netmonmon." It still runs in the background today, providing constant verification that these processes are up and running. A sample (although outdated) snapshot:
This application was a huge advantage for the system administrator, in that all of the various crucial system resources and processes could be interactively monitored; in addition, the background server provided 7x24 monitoring capabilities, sending pages out to the system administrators when something broke.
Several Consultants originally developed and implemented Netmon; Jim Gaynor designed the original Netmon system and Mike Snyder wrote the original version at the start of the project, Todd Koeckeritz continued the development effort, and Tom Brusehaver carried the responsibility for Netmon into 1997. Jim Fridlund also provided development and support services. There were probably others, who I unfortunately never had the opportunity to know.
URL: http://www.streamsoftware.com/bnsf/netmon.html 
Scott Berkholz <scottb@streamsoftware.com>