Network management
Encyclopedia
Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operation
, administration
, maintenance, and provisioning
of networked systems.
A common way of characterizing network management functions is FCAPS
—Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security.
Functions that are performed as part of network management accordingly include controlling, planning, allocating, deploying, coordinating, and monitoring the resources of a network, network planning, frequency
allocation, predetermined traffic
routing
to support load balancing
, cryptographic key distribution authorization
, configuration management
, fault management
, security management
, performance management
, bandwidth management
, Route analytics
and accounting management
.
Data for network management is collected through several mechanisms, including agent
s installed on infrastructure, synthetic monitoring
that simulates transactions, logs of activity, sniffers and real user monitoring
. In the past network management mainly consisted of monitoring whether devices were up or down; today performance management has become a crucial part of the IT team's role which brings about a host of challenges—especially for global organizations.
Note: Network management does not include user terminal equipment
.
, command-line interface
(CLIs), custom XML, CMIP, Windows Management Instrumentation
(WMI), Transaction Language 1
, CORBA
, NETCONF
, and the Java Management Extensions
(JMX).
Schemas include the WBEM
, the Common Information Model
, and MTOSI
amongst others.
Medical Service Providers provide a niche marketing utility for managed service providers; as HIPAA legislation consistently increases demands for knowledgeable providers. Medical Service Providers are liable for the protection of their clients confidential information, including in an electronic realm. This liability creates a significant need for managed service providers who can provide secure infrastructure for transportation of medical data.
Operations management
Operations management is an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and/or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resources as needed, and...
, administration
System administrator
A system administrator, IT systems administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network...
, maintenance, and provisioning
Provisioning
In telecommunication, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide services to its users. In NS/EP telecommunications services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.In a...
of networked systems.
- Operation deals with keeping the network (and the services that the network provides) up and running smoothly. It includes monitoring the network to spot problems as soon as possible, ideally before users are affected.
- Administration deals with keeping track of resources in the network and how they are assigned. It includes all the "housekeeping" that is necessary to keep the network under control.
- Maintenance is concerned with performing repairs and upgrades—for example, when equipment must be replaced, when a router needs a patch for an operating system image, when a new switch is added to a network. Maintenance also involves corrective and preventive measures to make the managed network run "better", such as adjusting device configuration parameters.
- Provisioning is concerned with configuring resources in the network to support a given service. For example, this might include setting up the network so that a new customer can receive voice service.
A common way of characterizing network management functions is FCAPS
FCAPS
FCAPS is the ISO Telecommunications Management Network model and framework for network management. FCAPS is an acronym for fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security, the management categories into which the ISO model defines network management tasks...
—Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security.
Functions that are performed as part of network management accordingly include controlling, planning, allocating, deploying, coordinating, and monitoring the resources of a network, network planning, frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
allocation, predetermined traffic
Network traffic control
In computer networking, network traffic control is the process of managing, prioritising, controlling or reducing the network traffic, particularly Internet bandwidth, used by network administrators, to reduce congestion, latency and packet loss. This is part of bandwidth management...
routing
Routing
Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network , electronic data networks , and transportation networks...
to support load balancing
Load balancing (computing)
Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple computers or a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid...
, cryptographic key distribution authorization
Authorization
Authorization is the function of specifying access rights to resources, which is related to information security and computer security in general and to access control in particular. More formally, "to authorize" is to define access policy...
, configuration management
Configuration management
Configuration management is a field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.For information assurance, CM...
, fault management
Fault management
In network management, fault management is the set of functions that detect, isolate, and correct malfunctions in a telecommunications network, compensate for environmental changes, and include maintaining and examining error logs, accepting and acting on error detection notifications, tracing and...
, security management
Security management
Security Management is a broad field of management related to asset management, physical security and human resource safety functions. It entails the identification of an organization's information assets and the development, documentation and implementation of policies, standards, procedures and...
, performance management
Network performance management
- Factors affecting network performance :Not all networks are the same. As data is broken into component parts for transmission, several factors can affect their delivery....
, bandwidth management
Bandwidth management
Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link, which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network.- Management :Bandwidth management mechanisms may be...
, Route analytics
Route analytics
Route analytics is an emerging network monitoring technology specifically developed to analyze the routing protocols and structures in meshed IP Networks...
and accounting management
Accounting management
Accounting Management is the practical application of management techniques to control and report on the financial health of the organization. This involves the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs designed to provide financial data reporting for managerial decision making...
.
Data for network management is collected through several mechanisms, including agent
Software agent
In computer science, a software agent is a piece of software that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin agere : an agreement to act on one's behalf...
s installed on infrastructure, synthetic monitoring
Synthetic monitoring
Synthetic monitoring is website monitoring that is done using a web browser emulation or scripted real web browsers. Behavioral scripts are created to simulate an action or path that a customer or end-user would take on a site...
that simulates transactions, logs of activity, sniffers and real user monitoring
Real user monitoring
Real user monitoring is a passive web monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website is important to website operators to determine if users are being served quickly, error free and if not which part of a business process...
. In the past network management mainly consisted of monitoring whether devices were up or down; today performance management has become a crucial part of the IT team's role which brings about a host of challenges—especially for global organizations.
Note: Network management does not include user terminal equipment
Terminal equipment
In telecommunication, the term terminal equipment has the following meanings:* Communications equipment at either end of a communications link, used to permit the stations involved to accomplish the mission for which the link was established....
.
Technologies
A small number of accessories methods exist to support network and network device management. Access methods include the SNMPSimple Network Management Protocol
Simple Network Management Protocol is an "Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks. Devices that typically support SNMP include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks, and more." It is used mostly in network management systems to monitor...
, command-line interface
Command-line interface
A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
(CLIs), custom XML, CMIP, Windows Management Instrumentation
Windows Management Instrumentation
Windows Management Instrumentation is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification...
(WMI), Transaction Language 1
Transaction Language 1
Transaction Language 1 is a widely used management protocol in telecommunications. It is a cross-vendor, cross-technology man-machine language, and is widely used to manage optical and broadband access infrastructure in North America. TL1 is used in the input and output messages that pass between...
, CORBA
Çorba
Chorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...
, NETCONF
Netconf
The Network Configuration Protocol, NETCONF, is an IETF network management protocol. It was developed in the NETCONF working group and published in December 2006 as RFC 4741 and later revised in June 2011 and published as RFC 6241....
, and the Java Management Extensions
Java Management Extensions
Java Management Extensions is a Java technology that supplies tools for managing and monitoring applications, system objects, devices and service oriented networks. Those resources are represented by objects called MBeans...
(JMX).
Schemas include the WBEM
Web-Based Enterprise Management
Web-Based Enterprise Management is a set of systems management technologies developed to unify the management of distributed computing environments. WBEM is based on Internet standards and Distributed Management Task Force open standards: Common Information Model infrastructure and schema,...
, the Common Information Model
Common Information Model (computing)
The Common Information Model is an open standard that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them...
, and MTOSI
MTOSI
In telecommunications, Multi-Technology Operations System Interface is a standard for implementing interfaces between OSSs. Service providers use multiple Operational Support Systems to manage complex networks. Since the various parts of the network must interact, so must the OSSs. It is...
amongst others.
Medical Service Providers provide a niche marketing utility for managed service providers; as HIPAA legislation consistently increases demands for knowledgeable providers. Medical Service Providers are liable for the protection of their clients confidential information, including in an electronic realm. This liability creates a significant need for managed service providers who can provide secure infrastructure for transportation of medical data.
See also
- Information Technology Infrastructure LibraryInformation Technology Infrastructure LibraryThe Information Technology Infrastructure Library , is a set of good practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form , ITIL is published in a series of five core publications, each of which covers an ITSM lifecycle stage...
- Integrated business planningIntegrated business planningIntegrated business planning refers to the technologies, applications and processes of connecting the planning function across the enterprise to improve organizational alignment and financial performance...
- Network administratorNetwork administratorA network administrator, network analyst or network engineer is a person responsible for the maintenance of computer hardware and software that comprises a computer network...
- Network monitoringNetwork monitoringThe term network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator in case of outages...
- Network performance managementNetwork performance management- Factors affecting network performance :Not all networks are the same. As data is broken into component parts for transmission, several factors can affect their delivery....
- Network traffic measurementNetwork traffic measurementIn computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management.- Tools :...
- Out-of-band managementOut-of-band managementIn computing, out-of-band management involves the use of a dedicated management channel for device maintenance...
- Systems managementSystems managementSystems management refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed systems including computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in telecommunications....
- Application service managementApplication Service ManagementApplication service management is an emerging discipline within systems management that focuses on monitoring and managing the performance and quality of service of business transactions....
- Website monitoringWebsite monitoringWebsite monitoring is the process of testing and verifying that end-users can interact with a website or web application. Website monitoring is often used by businesses to ensure that their sites are live and responding....
- In-network managementIn-network managementWith current network management technologies, management functions typically reside outside the network in management stations and servers, which interact with network elements and devices via network protocols for management, in order to execute management tasks, including fault, configuration,...
- Network management systemNetwork management systemA network management system is a combination of hardware and software used to monitor and administer a computer network.Individual network elements in a network are managed by an element management system.-Tasks and operational details:...
- Business service managementBusiness Service ManagementBusiness service management is an approach used to manage business-aligned IT services. A BSM philosophy promotes a customer-centric and business-focused approach to Service Management, aligning business objectives and priorities with IT or ICT from strategy through to operations and continual...
- Comparison of network monitoring systemsComparison of network monitoring systemsThis is a comparison of some notable network monitoring systems.- Legend :Product Name : The name of the software, linked to its Wikipedia article...