What is Cacti?
Cacti is an open source, network monitoring and graphing tool written in PHP/MySQL. It uses the RRDTool (Round-robin database tool) engine to store data and generate graphics, and collects periodical data through Net-SNMP (an application suite to implement SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol).
Ian Berry had started developing Cacti back in June 2001, while he was working with a local Internet service provider in the U.S. He found that RRDTool is flexible enough to generate complex graphing and reports about network infrastructures, but it was lacking a friendly interface. So, he started developing the interface with PHP/MySQL and had the first public release (version 0.6) on November 21, 2001. Soon, the application gained its popularity in the open source community.
In 2004, Ian brought a second developer into the team, which has expanded to six developers today. Here they are (in the order of joining the project):
Ian Berry
Larry Adams
Tony Roman
J.P. Pasnak
Jimmy Conner
Reinhard Scheck
