Transcript Slide 1

Network Management
by
Woraphon Lilakiatsakun
Course details




Midterm 30 %
Final 40 %
LAB 20 %
Assignment 10 %
Books

Network Management Fundamental




Alexander Clemm
Cisco press
LANs to WAN complete management
guide
SNMP V3, Rmon1 and 2

William Stallings
Defining Network
Management

Network management refers to the
activities, methods, procedures and
tools that pertain to the operation,
administration, maintenance, and
provision of networked systems

Operation – keeping the network up
and running smoothly


Monitoring the network to spot problems
asap.
Administration – keeping track of
resources in the network and how the
are assigned

Documentation

Maintenance – concern with performing
repairs and upgrades (involving
corrective and preventive)



When a router need a new OS
When a new switch should be added
Provisioning – concern with configuring
resources in the network to support a
given service
Organization
Network
Operates
Administers
maintains
provisions
Organization
Network Management
uses
Network
manages
Network Management
Support
Activities and Operational
Procedures
Systems and Applications
Use and leverage
Important of Network
Management


Not just work ! But it is needed carefully
planning
Let’s consider in term of service provider
perspective




Who can operate the network at the lowest cost
Who provides better customer experience
(minimal turnaround time)
Who can maintain and guarantee the highest QoS
Who can roll out services fast and efficiently

Similar factor to businesses that run
their own networks


Cost saving in operating the network
benefit the enterprise (COST)
Fast turnaround time to deploy new
services and high QoS can translate to
competitive advantage (Quality and
Revenue)
Cost

One of the main goals of network
management is


to make operations more efficient and
operator more productive
Ultimate goal is to reduce TCO (Total
Cost of Ownership) that is associated
with the network
Total Cost of Ownership
people , electricity ,
physical space
Equipment Cost
amortized over equipment lifetime
TCO
(Total Cost of Ownership)
Operational Cost

Operating cost can be higher than the cost of
amortizing the network equipment


May be a factor of 2 or more
Let ‘s consider



Operating cost 200,000/year
Equipment cost 300,000 (amortized 100,000/year)
Efficiently operation can save 50,000 /year

Make business more competitive
How ?

Network testing and troubleshooting tools


System that facilitate turn-up of service and
automate provisioning


Reduce human error
Performance reporting tool and bottleneck analysis



More quickly identify and isolate problems System that
facilitate turn-up of service and automate provisioning
Minimize the required investment
Maximize the “bang for the buck”
Other ?


Reduce skill level
Reduce in investment in training
Quality

In term of network services and
communication




Bandwidth – use efficiently
delay - minimize
Reliability – traffic can go through steadily
availability - working most of the time

Redundancy (in case of equipments fail)
How ?

System for the end to end provisioning of a service
automate many steps that be configured

Less error prone / Misconfiguration


Performance trend analysis

Help network managers detect potential network bottlenecks


Easy to troubleshoot and fix
Take preventive action before problems occur
Alarm correlation capabilities

Faster identification of the root cause of observed failure

Minimize time of actual outage
If quality is not met

Lost revenue


Increased network cost from inefficient
utilization or network resources


Customers will change the operator
More network equipments to support a
certain level of service
Higher operation cost

To fix the problems
Revenue


Open up market opportunities ex.
Service provisioning systems



Reduce time start from a service is ordered to a
service actually turned up
Translate to quicker time to revenue generation
Augment a service offering managementrelated capabilities


To configure service features over Web (ex. For
voice: caller ID)
Attract more customers
Players in Network
Management space
Enterprise IT
Department
Equipment Vendor
Service provider
Third-party
Application Vendor
End Users
System Integrator
Users of
Network Management
Providers of
Network Management
Network Management Users

The Service Provider

Telecommunication services


Data services



Telephone, voice mail
Leased line, Internet connectivity
Many communication services are being
commoditized
To win the marketplace


Turn up and roll out the services fastest
Offer best service level at lowest cost

The Enterprise IP Department



In charge of running the network inside an
enterprise
Can be thought of as mini service provider
but …
No generate income , it is a cost center

Focus on providing services at the lowest
cost

Only one customer: the enterprise




End users within the enterprise have no
choice
Not core business of the enterprise
Enterprise IT departments are not
regulated
So, not much for investing in
management applications and tools
The End User

Refer to “Network Manager” whose
roles might be the following




Network administrator – configure network
devices / trouble shoot (remotely)
Craft Technician – fix problems (on site)
Help desk representatives – take user calls
and support
Network planner – plan topology
Network Management
Provider




The Equipment Vendor
Before not focus on management
features
Recently, capability to manage
networking equipment is increasingly
being recognized
In some cases, a management software
might bundle with the equipment

Third-party Application Vendor



not own the equipment
Multivendor support
The system Integrator

Provide services to integrate a set of
management applications with a specific
network and operations support
environment
Technical Challenges




Application Characteristics
Scale
Cross-section of technologies
Integration
Application characteristics


Transaction-based system characteristics
Provisioning applications


Drive desired configurations down to network
devices
To perform provisioning, a management
system typically send requests to set of
network elements and processes the
responses

These interactions constitute transactions
Network and Network element
Network Provisioning




Interrupt driven system characteristics
An important aspect is to keep track of
the health of the network
Alarm monitoring applications can
receive and process such alarms,
alerting the network manager to take
action properly
Real time app or near real time app
Alarm monitoring


Number crunching system
characteristics
Network performance analysis





identify bottleneck
Assess whether service levels are being
met
Evaluate utilization of network resources
Understanding traffic pattern
Trends for planning future network rollout
Scale

Operations concurrency



How to maximize concurrency in
communication network element
Instead of sequential process – send a
request/wait/ then send again
Send several requests to network element
at once
Impact of operations concurrency
on Operations throughput

Pic 1-12



Event-propagation
How to allow events to propagate
efficiently to the system and update
state
After an event is received, the
management app. has to do



Quickly identify where it belongs
What its implication is
What else might be affected

Scoping


How to access and manipulate large
chunks of management information
efficiently and through single operation
Distribution and addressing


How to allow processing to be distributed
across different system
How to provide for location transparency
and efficient addressing
Impact of bulk operations on
management efficiency

Fig 1-13
Cross-section technologies

Information Modeling


Require expertise with object-oriented
analysis and design techniques such as
Unified Modeling Language (UML)
Databases

Require persistent storage such as to store
configuration information with which to
provision the network and services

Distributed system


Management applications are distributed
applications.
Communication protocols

Management apps have to communicate
with other systems



Network element and other management apps
User interfaces –human factors
Other considerations
Integration

Fig 1-15
Management integration

Fig 1-16
Organization and Operations
challenge

Functional division of Tasks








Network planning – topology /nodes/links
Network deployment- to install equipment
Network maintenance and planning –
perform software and hardware upgrade
Workforce management
Inventory management
Order management – take order from
customers
Help desk
Billing

Geographical distribution


Support and manage globally
Operation Procedures and contingency
planning


Comprehensive operational procedure and
guidelines and documenting are needed
Part of procedure should deal with
contingent planning

What should be done when a virus outbreak
inside the network or under denial of service
attack
Business challenges

Placing a value on network management



Return of investment models are needed but it is
hard to quantify
Feature Vs Product
Uneven competitive landscape



Timing – 3rd party management vendor tends to
lag behind
Economics
Customer expectation