Network Management: Introduction

Fundamental to network management is the ability to gather information about the status and behavior of the networked configuration, which is the function of network monitoring. Indeed, many NMS provide only a network monitoring capability. We have already examined the basic architectural and design issues of network monitoring in this week.

For network management, there are five key functional areas as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

On the basis of your understanding of the topic, address the following:

• List the five Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) management functional areas.
• Describe each of the OSI management functional areas.
• Discuss the role of these functional areas in a SNMP.

When discussing KPIs of network management, there are various elements that are tracked in order to give a projection of the health of the system. One of the KPIs is ‘response time’ among other indicators. Each element in a response time is one segment of the overall path an inquiry takes through a communications configuration as well as each element contributes a portion of the overall response time.

Let’s examine the elements involved in a typical networking station in which up to seven elements can be observed.

• Describe each of the seven elements involved for a communication to and from a workstation accessing a network.