An architecture and evaluation of IP network management system using distributed processing environment

Abstract

Expansion of IP network scale usually results in an increase of the processing loads related to network management, making it difficult to implement management systems based on a single unit of hardware. Therefore, implementation of network management systems using distributed processing technologies is actively investigated. Important issues in the design of network management systems based on distributed processing are the correspondence of distributed functions with the managed agents supported by the network, as well as the procedure calls between distributed functions. In order to realize fully the performance of a network management system, it is necessary to design a system such that the correspondence between the functions and the network agents can be easily maintained as the network is expanded and the overhead due to the distributed processing is kept as low as possible. In this paper, we propose an architecture of a network management system intended for an efficient management of large-scale networks that makes it possible to increase the number of subsystems by designing the functionalities aimed at the distribution of IP network management. Using such an architecture, we built an actual distributed IP network management system based on a DCE distributed environment and demonstrated that such a system exhibits adequate performance characteristics. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 83(11): 22–32, 2000