Network Management Platform Research Articles

Using design patterns to develop reusable object-oriented communication software

Despite dramatic increases in network and host performance, it remains difficult to design, implement, and reuse communication software for complex distributed systems. Examples of these systems include global personal communication systems, network management platforms, enterprise medical imaging systems, and real-time market data monitoring and analysis systems. In addition, it is often hard to directly reuse existing algorithms, detailed designs, interfaces, or implementations in these systems due to the growing heterogeneity of hardware/software architectures and the increasing diversity of operating system platforms.

Tearing down the wall: Integrating ISO and internet Management

Today, despite “protocol wars” fought with the fervor and rhetoric usually reserved for politics or religion, many network management platform products support both SNMP and CMIP. Increasingly, the challenge is not to pick a single “best” management protocol, but rather to find some way of gluing together a diverse set of networked devices which speak a hodge-podge of standard and proprietary management protocols. In this heterogeneous environment, end-to-end management requires an integrated, unified view of the managed network, despite differences in management protocol and information structure. Integrated management can be facilitated by the development of “proxy” mechanisms and Management Information Base (MIB) translation procedures. Key to achieving timely, effective integrated management is to preserve and leverage from existing commercial investment in both ISO/CCITT and Internet-based management technologies through deployment of common methods and tools which support integration.

Extending trouble ticket systems to fault diagnostics

Network management in large heterogeneous communication environments requires the incorporation of more advanced tools than are currently available, especially in the area of fault management. By providing an informational infrastructure for documenting network behavior and maintenance activities, TTSs (trouble ticket systems) have provided some relief for the fault management problem. Researchers have recognized TTSs as a means for realizing more advanced functions in network management platforms to effect automatic trouble ticket generation, fault diagnostics, and the correlation of multiple views network problems and behavior. The authors describe current research trends towards understanding and implementing these advanced functions in a TTS framework.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The design of the idea network management platform

AbstractThis article describes the design of the IDEA network management platform which is to provide a general solution for constructing network management systems over heterogeneous and distributed environments.

A platform for heterogeneous interconnection network management

A comprehensive network management function built into the interconnection network provides a means of meeting user needs of fault tolerance, performance, accounting, and security. However, meeting these needs on a heterogeneous interconnection network is several levels more complex than on a homogeneous network because of the existence of multiple protocol stacks for communication. An architecture that will solve this problem by analyzing the heterogeneous interconnection network as a single entity is proposed. The authors present the design issues evaluated in choosing this approach and establish the need for the various components in this architecture. An overview is presented of each of the components, and their place in the architecture is pointed out. >