Final answer:
Designing a heartbeat monitoring system using RMONs to signal the NMS of any failure within a minute would involve configuring network devices with RMON agents and establishing a communication protocol for heartbeat signals, with alert mechanisms in the NMS to respond to missed or erroneous signals.
Step-by-step explanation:
To design a heartbeat monitoring system using RMONs (Remote Monitoring), you must ensure that it can quickly communicate any failure to the network management system (NMS). A typical design would include a heartbeat transmission mechanism that continuously sends signals to the NMS, indicating normal operation. These heartbeats can be simple ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo requests or more sophisticated custom signals depending on system requirements.
In the event of a failure, the absence of a heartbeat or an error message should be detected by the NMS within a short predefined time interval, here being one minute. The detection of this condition should trigger an alert in the NMS for immediate action.
Although an actual sketch cannot be shown in this text response, envision these components connected in a way that ensures seamless communication between the devices and the NMS.