Questions about rmon/snmp and history/stats

I have been trying to get some monitoring going with cacti and I got it working on our Avaya switches easily enough with enabling snmp and rmon.

I was not returning any values until I used the following command on port 1/1 of my main switch (to see WAN connectivity bandwidth):

rmon rmon history 1 1/1 owner "WAN (history)" rmon stats 1 1/1 owner "WAN (stats)" 

Now, the documentation with Avaya isn't all that well done, so I am trying to figure out everything on my own and without any real expertise.

I typed in this command because it made sense when I was reading through stuff, and obviously my stats starting rolling in. But I am not sure exactly what I am doing with it and what sort of things I should be doing to get my data sets properly.

I am more of a systems guy but have about 20 odd years of experience in switching and routing, but by no means am I advanced or expert level. :)

So please, if someone could give me a quick rundown that's easy to understand with rmon, buckets, best practices, etc and whatever else you think I might need to know.

Thanks!