Scorpion's Corner

We shall continue this post from the previous one exploring the FCAPS of the Network Management.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) network management model defines five functional areas of network management.

• Fault Management:

  • Detect, isolate, notify, and correct faults encountered in the network, like whether some device is down etc.

  • Increases Network reliability and effectiveness

  • Increases productivity of the users

• Configuration Management:

  • Configuration aspects of network devices such as configuration file management, inventory management, and software management.

  • Allows rapid access to configuration information

  • Facilitates remote configuration and provisioning

  • Up-to-date inventory of the Network elements

  • It talks about issues like speed, trunking, STP state etc.

• Performance Management:

  • Monitor and measure various aspects of performance so that overall performance can be maintained at an acceptable level.

  • Reduces network overcrowding and inaccessibility

  • Very good measure of QOS

  • With proactive utilization of data generated here NMS can prevent performance issues

  • it gives an account of issues like CPU utilization, Free Memory, utilization, Broadcast rates, interference in case of WLANS etc.

• Security Management:

  • Provide access to network devices and corporate resources to authorized individuals.

  • Builds user confidence

  • protects Network from malicious attacks

  • This takes into consideration different ways of Security like RADIUS, ACL, Signature, Encryption etc.

• Accounting Management:

  • Usage information of network resources for establishing metrics, check quotas, determine costs and bill users etc.

  • Measures and reports accounting information based on individual groups and users

  • Internal verification of third party billing for usage.

Further exploration of NMS in next post.