LAN fault management ensemble

Abstract

LAN systems are widely used in distributed environment and it becomes more indispensable to manage distributed LAN systems in an integrated manner as enterprise-level networks. This paper describes the LAN fault management ensemble which has been developed by the Ensemble Team of INTAP NM (Network Management) Technical Committee. Ensembles represent specific solutions to particular problems of the networks as a collection of managed resources, functions and scenarios. This ensemble provides a method of managing an enterprise-level private network in particular fault management areas. OSI management is adopted as a platform to manage LANs which are assumed to be managed by SNMP or OSI layer management protocols. This ensemble takes a state-oriented approach which is better suited, and provides more efficient integrated network management for large-scale enterprise networks containing many resources to be managed, because SNMP management is performed by polling based on the stateless approach. In addition, this ensemble adopts international standards or publicly available specifications regarding the necessary management information. Integrated management is executed by the OSI manager and proxy agents. Proxy agents act as OSI agents and convert information gathered by SNMP manager/agents or OSI layer management entities to OSI. Various network resources such as FDDI, Ethernet and MIB-II are defined on the basis of definition of the ISO/IEC, IEEE and NM Forum standards and additional necessary resources are uniquely defined for this ensemble requirements.