Introduction & Network

Management Background

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Lesson Objectives
• At the end of this chapter, you’ll be able
to understand:
• The importance of NM for the organization
• NM definition
• NM objective & functions
• NM model

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Outline
• Introduction & importance of NM
• NM definition
• NM objectives & functions
• Role of NE
• NM model
• NM protocol
• NM platform
• NM application
• NMS

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Introduction
• WHY NM important?
• to ensure the successful of the operation for
any network.
• Objective!
• Combine all the network devices in order full
control could be done.
• WHY NM is critical in a network field?
• Heterogeneous network & multi-vendor
products.

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WHY NM Important?
• Host centric & homogeneous ~ host
computer or mainframe manage the
network.
• Currently, network expands without
limitation such as in LAN, MAN, WAN.
• Different technology, application,
protocol, topology and standards from
multi-vendor make it difficult to manage
the network.

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What is NM?
• IEEE Standard 802.6 ~ “NM provides mechanisms for
the monitoring, control, and coordination of all
managed objects within the physical layer and DLL of a
node”.
• Divakara K. Udupa ~ “monitoring and controlling the
resources of computers, the resources used in the
connection and communication of computers, and the
applications used in the computers”.
• Butler Cox Foundation ~ “The set of activities required
to plan, install, monitor and maintain all network
components in order to achieve specified service levels
reliably, at an acceptable and an agreed cost”.

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Definition

• A set of activities such as planning,

installing, monitoring, controlling,
maintaining, all network components in
order to achieve specified service levels
reliably, at an acceptable and an agreed
cost.

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NM Objectives
• Higher network availability
• Reduce network operational costs
• Reduce network bottlenecks
• Increase flexibility of operation and
integration
• Higher efficiency
• Ease of use
• Security

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NM Functions
• Day-to-day functions
• Control and maintain SLAs
• User support
• Fault, configuration, performance, security
and accounting management.
• Planning Functions
• Tactical planning & design
• Cost control
• Policy and connection with vendors

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Network Engineer (NE)
• NE responsible for:-
• Installing, maintaining, controlling and troubleshoot
network
• Ensuring information & data being sent through
network are consistent, accurate, fast, and
economical according to customer needs.
• NMS helps NE in complex networks so that it
becomes more efficient and transparent to the
users.

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NE Role
• Plan, design & analyze
• Build
• Maintain, direct & control
• Expand
• Optimize
• Troubleshoot & testing
• Staffing
• Writing report

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NE Role (cont…)
• Plan, design & analyze
• Network’s main objective ~ organization &
customer needs and satisfactions
• NE needs to develop a comrehensive plan
including all network criterias.
• When developing plan, NE will analyze user
community.
• Design will include additional tools and
equipment to provide new route and back-up if
fault happens or adding bandwidth.
• For planning, activities involved include develop
objectives, schedule, budget, policy and
procedures.

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NE Role (cont…)
• Build
• With the help of network plan, NE will decide the
connection and the needs of hardware and
software required.
• Xtvt involves include develop organization
structure, delegation, procedure for integration
among organizations.

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NE Role (cont…)
• Maintain, direct & control
• After building network, NE needs to maintain
and monitor the network, eventhough it has
been taking care during implementation of the
network since, softwares and hardware may be
failed and need to be updated.
• Directing also needed to ensure the xtvt,
decision making, communication and motivation
are successful.
• Control also needed to build, measure, evaluate
and correcting performance so that it become a
standard performance.

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NE Role (cont…)
• Expand
• Changes in users’ need will affect the overall
network plan.
• Usually, existing network will be expanded
instead of redesigning and building an entirely
new one.
• NE needs to apply the correct networking
solution to accommodate these changes.

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NE Role (cont…)
• Optimize
• NE need to plan carefully to ensure each device
can operate when it is required so that
organization can achieve optimum network
performance. (under-utilize)
• Each device need to be configured carefully
using requried parameters settings so that the
use of network can achieve optimum
performance but not over the limit. (over-utilize)

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NE Role (cont…)
• Troubleshoot & testing
• Network troubles still exist eventhough network
is built in care.
• NE needs to control errors and faults from time
to time to reduce the network problems.
• NE needs to solve the problems by doing some
testings, recording errors, changing the
parameters & schedule, coordination, changing
softwares, hardwares or circuits.

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NE Role (cont…)
• Staffing
• Xtvt involves such as interviewing, choosing and
training staffs.
• One NE is not enough to manage the network in
an organization, thus, supporting staffs are
required to help NE in daily work (i.e. system
analyst, programmer, technical staff, OMPD etc.)

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NE Role (cont…)
• Writing report
• NE is responsible for providing basic
information about status, reports and
network documentation.
• Network status is part of the organization
and control should be monitored so that
network can be accessed continuously.
• Incomplete network reports will give
problems to organization when deciding to
expand the network or for future needs.
• Network documentation is important to
manage network and use for the future.
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NM Model
• ISO divides NM into 5 functional areas:
i. Fault management (kerosakan/ralat)
ii. Configuration management
(konfigurasi/perubahan)
iii. Security management (keselamatan)
iv. Performance management (prestasi)
v. Accounting management (perakaunan)

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Fault Management
• Process of locating problems, or faults
on the data network.
• It involves:
• Discover the problem
• Isolate the problem
• Fix the problem (if possible)
• Adv: with NMS, NE can locate & solve
problems more quickly.

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Configuration Mgmt
• The configuration of certain network
devices controls the behavior of the
network.
• Conf. Mgt is a process of finding the
network data in the organization and use
this data to reconfigure or to set up the
network devices.
• It is the fundamental aspects for NM
because fault, performance, security and
accounting mgt is dependent or supported
by the details in the configuration mgt.

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Security Mgmt
• Process of controlling access to
information on the network for authorized
users only.
• Some information stored by computers
attached to the network may be
inappropriate for all users to view.
• It provides the methods to control access
point and provide audit trails as well as
alarm if violation of attempted or actual
breaches of security.

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Performance Mgmt
• Involves the measuring the performance
of network hardware, software and media
such as:
• Throughput
• Percentage utilization
• Error rates
• Response time
• The objective is to ensure that the
network will have the capacity to
accommodate the users’ needs.

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Accounting Mgmt
• It involves:
• Tracking each individual and group
user’s utilization of network resources
to:
• Better ensure that users have sufficient
resources
• Determine cost and bill users
• Giving and taking back the network
access privilege to the users.

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NM Protocol
• A protocol is a set of rules that governs
the aspects of communication and
networking.
• NM protocols are needed to access the
information from the network device.
• NM protocol can be simple, complexes or
advance.

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NM Protocol (cont…)
• Simple NM protocol would define common data
formats and parameters and allow for easy
retrieval of information.
• Complex NM protocol would add some change
capability and a security mechanism to protect
the information requested and to prevent anyone
from making the changes.
• Advance NM protocol would be able to remotely
execute NM tasks for all network devices.

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Example of NM Protocol

• SNMP (Simple Network Management

Protocol)
• SNMPv2, SNMPv3.
• CMIS/CMIP (Common Management
Information Services / Common
Management Information Protocol)

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NM Protocol Technology
• SNMP is a bit beyond the simple tool, with
adequate monitoring and some change
capabilities.
• SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 enhance the SNMP
feature set.
• CMIS/CMIP approaches the advance tool, but
implementation issues have limited its use.
• NM protocols simply give methods to monitor
and configure network devices. It is a key point
in the development of NM applications.

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NM Platform
• A software package that provides the basic
functionality of NM for many different network
components.
• It is needed because NM involved in different
systems and vendors, and each one manage
only one specific device in the network.
• Each vendor develop different system from
others such as modems, hubs, routers,
multiplexers, and other network components.

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NM Platform (cont…)
• In order these different systems integrate to
each other, therefore, NM platform is
needed.
• The goal of the NM platform is to provide
generic functionality for managing a variety
of network devices.

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NM Platform Features
• Graphical user interface
• Network map
• Database management system
• Standard method to query device
• Customizable menu system
• Graphing tools
• Application programming interface
• System security

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NM Platform Features (cont…)
• Graphical user interface
• GUI is useful for giving the user easier access to the
features of the platform.
• Standard GUI should conform to a common look-and-feel
standard.
• By using a standard GUI, the platform will behave in a
manner that is documented and conformed by different
vendors.
• If all vendors build their applications using a common
look-and-feel, it makes the system easier to use and
manipulate.
• Example: Microsoft Windows, OSF Motif, Sun
MicroSystem Open Look.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)
• Network map
• Network map is important in NM because it can
show the connection between devices
(hardware, software, media) physically or
logically.
• Fault mgt tools can show what cause the erros
by using the colors in mapping.
• Configuration mgt tools can show the physical
and logical configration of the network
pictorially.
• Added benefits are: autodiscovery
(automatically discover the devices in the
network), automapping (draw the network
graphically)

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NM Platform Features (cont…)
• Database management system
• It helps in many network mgt tasks.
• Applications can use the database for
information storage.
• Relationships can be built between data
items, which help in network diagnosis and
maintenance.
• DBMS allow users to generate customized
reports and perform automated backup.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)

• Standard method to query device

• Important because the platform can gather the
information from different network tools by different
vendors.
• NE can query each component to get the information
through platform and the use of that data.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)

• Customizable menu system

• Menus in platform NM can be changed and
designed according to the needs of user.
• Through the customizable menu system, NE
tasks can be done consistently.
• Menus by specific network tools or by
vendors can be made upon required and this
will make NE easier to manage the device.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)
• Graphing tools
• NM platform should give NE the ability to produce
graphs, such as line, bar, pie, column chart of data.
• Also the ability to merge graphs into reports is
beneficial since it is easy to see information
represented on a graph instead of raw data or text
reports.
• Graphs of current network traffic and errors can help
in fault and performance mgt, and graphs of
historical data help isolate network trends.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)

• Application programming interface

• API is a library of programming procedures and
functions allowing access to information kept within
the NM platform.
• It is important because: it allows for integration of
vendor applications, and it allows NE to write
custom programs for their environments.
• Only through the API can external programs use the
network map, integrate into the menu system, store
and retrieve information from the database, send
message to the event log etc.

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NM Platform Features (cont…)

• System security
• NM platform and apllications contain a wealth
information about the network, the
configuration of the device, network and
applications security, performance and
accounting methods.
• This information should be protected and can
be accessed by network cracker or
unauthorized user.
• The security for the platform must be additional
to that provided by the OS.

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NM Applications
• NM Platform provides generic
functionality for all managed devices.
• NM applications is designed to help NE to
manage a specific set of devices or
services.
• NM applications are developed by
network vendors to help customers
manage their devices.

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Relationship between platform
and application.

Vendor 1 Vendor 2 Vendor X

Applications …….

Platform

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Goals of NM Applications
• Effectively manage a specific set of
devices
• Avoid functionality overlap with the
platform
• Integrate with a platform through the API
and menu system
• Reside on multiple platform

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Goals of NM Application (cont…)
• Effectively manage a specific set of devices
• A hub manufacturer could build an application that
shows the physical connectors on the hub when a
user selects the hub on the network map.
• This application could allow the user to configure
features of the hub, turn ports on or off, or monitor
error rates and throughput.
• This application could help accomplish
configuration and performance management tasks
for the hub.

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Goals of NM Application (cont…)
• Avoid functionality overlap with the platform
• NM applications strive not to incorporate functionality
that overlaps with the platform.
• Overlap would result in multiple ways to accomplish
the same result on the platform, perhaps providing a
confusing interface for the user.
• Also, producing features that exist on the platform
could be waste of development effort for the
application developers.
• When the platforms does not provide a feature that
application needs, application will add those features.
• i.e. Pie graphs is not provided in platform, application
may provide the features.

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Goals of NM Application (cont…)
• Integrate with a platform through the API
and menu system
• This allows the user to view the applications
and platforms as one uniform NMS.
• API allows for a programmatic interface to
the platform.
• The menu system allows for the invocation
of application programs from the same menu
system the users sees on the platform.

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Goals of NM Application (cont…)
• Reside on multiple platform
• Application that is available only on a single
platform forces the NE to use this platform
for NM tasks.
• This is not an ideal situation because the
single platform may not have the necessary
features or support other needed
applications.

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Network Mmgt System
• NMS is built from two (2) major
components:
• Platform
• Applications
• Platform ~ A software package that provides
the basic functionality of NM for many different
network components (HP OpenView)
• Application ~ developed by vendors to help NE
manage a specific set of devices or services

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Choosing NMS

• Perform device inventory

• Prioritize the functional areas of NM
• Survey NM applications
• Choose the NM platform
• In order (“Tertib”)

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Choosing NMS (cont…)

• Perform device inventory

• Identify hardware, software, circuit in the
network
• Discover whether each of the devices is
manageable by any NM protocols either
standard or proprietary
• Prioritize the mission-critical devices
• Managing mail-server is more important than
printer server.

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Choosing NMS (cont…)
• Prioritize the functional areas of NM
• In many cases, the most important areas of
NM is fault mgt.
• However, some organization could require
security mgt or configuration mgt take first
priority.
• This step is essential because we need to be
able to pick the most important NM
applications for the devices.

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Choosing NMS (cont…)
• Survey NM Applications
• Find NM applications that help perform our
key areas of NM for the devices.
• NM applications help to accomplish the
functional areas of NM because without the
applications, we have only the generic
functionality of the NM platform.
• Using applications designed to manage the
devices allow us to spend resources actively
in managing the network.

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Choosing NMS (cont…)
• Choose the NM platform
• Ideally, the applications selected work on at least
one common platform.
• If they work together on only one platform, the
choice is straightforward.
• If there are many choices of platforms, we should
choose the one with the architecture that closely
resembles the way our organization plans to manage
the network. (centralized, distributed, hierarchical)
• Another criteria when selecting a platform is the
hardware available to run the software on.

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Choosing NMS (cont…)
• In order
• In choosing NMS, organization tends to
perform these steps out of order.
• Many times selection of the NM platform
comes first; only later it is discovered that
there are no applications that run on the
platform to manage the important devices on
the network.
• Follow the steps in order, so the NMS works
well for the network and organization.

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Review
• Introduction & importance of NM
• NM definition
• NM objectives & functions
• Role of NE
• NM model
• NM protocol
• NM platform
• NM application
• NMS

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