Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!portal!atari!momenta!gregpf
From: gregpf@momenta (Greg Presedo-Floyd)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.misc
Subject: Re: What is Network Management?
Message-ID: <1990Dec28.171622.329@momenta>
Date: 28 Dec 90 17:16:22 GMT
References: <1990Dec20.191404.1681@julius.cs.uiuc.edu> <13383@uudell.dell.com>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Momenta Corporation
Lines: 39

mjhammel@Kepler.dell.com (Michael J. Hammel) writes:
>In article <1990Dec20.191404.1681@julius.cs.uiuc.edu>, zweig@cs.uiuc.edu
>(Johnny Zweig) writes:
>> someone give me a succinct, nutshell definition of the term "Network
>> 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.

My comments on network managment are from a consumer perspective. A lot of
net h/w vendors (HP, NAT in Cupertino, David Systems in Mountian View, Synoptics
in MV ) are trying to embed h/w in their components that (a) report
various statistics and (b) can be controlled by a management station.

There are currently 2 types of management schemes leading the field:
S)imple N)etwork M)anagement P)rotocol and ?? (I can't remember) . 
Some vendors can actually demonstrate "management" from a central location.
Many are not quite there yet.  To stay abrest, try to goto/get_a_summary
of the INTEROP network show that goes on every year.

I would like to see "management" evolve into me being able to buy bridges,
concentrators, various net h/w and to have 1 station query, control,
tune, and shut down that multi-vendor h/w I purchased.  There are a
lot of aditional subtleties to this topic I will not address now :-)

To the brave future of network computing ...
-- 
Greg Presedo-Floyd		"Representing myself"
Momenta Corporation		415-969-3876      
Mountian View, CA 94043