Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!chinacat!uudell!Kepler!mjhammel From: mjhammel@Kepler.dell.com (Michael J. Hammel) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.misc Subject: Re: What is Network Management? Message-ID: <13383@uudell.dell.com> Date: 21 Dec 90 21:44:32 GMT References: <1990Dec20.191404.1681@julius.cs.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@uudell.dell.com Reply-To: mjhammel@Kepler.dell.com (Michael J. Hammel) Distribution: comp Organization: Dell Computer Corp. Lines: 27 In article <1990Dec20.191404.1681@julius.cs.uiuc.edu>, zweig@cs.uiuc.edu (Johnny Zweig) writes: > Being involved in the somewhat narrow domain of protocol processing software, > there are aspects of the Networking Scene(tm) I do not fully understand. Could > someone give me a succinct, nutshell definition of the term "Network > Management"? My guess is that if they can, its opinion only. I worked on a project at Bell Northern Research (BNR, Inc, R&D arm of Northern Telecom) that was aimed at a sort of any-to-any connectivity system (plug your Goombox computer into the system and it could connect to an IBM mainframe or DEC or whatever). The project died (IMHO due to poor management). But the center of it was based on the ability to "see" the network and bring up or down individual pieces remotely. So if some modem connection was broken you would see it as a red icon in the network and could either re-route traffic or cycle the modem to try to bring it back up. Network management then was being able to see the network and correct "faults". "Faults" is weakly defined though. They were mostly hardware (modems, pc's, cluster controllers, etc) faults. There was little (that I remember) that dealt with wiring or software problems. Michael J. Hammel | mjhammel@{Kepler|socrates}.dell.com Dell Computer Corp. | {73377.3467|76424.3024}@compuserve.com #include | zzham@ttuvm1.bitnet | uunet!uudell!feynman!mjhammel #define CUTESAYING "Your cute quote here"