By David SimsThe term "network management" means different things to different people.
In some cases, it involves a solitary network consultant monitoring network activity with an outdated protocol analyzer. Not the ideal situation. Other cases entail a distributed database, autopolling of network devices and high-end work stations "generating real-time graphical views of network topology changes and traffic." What the one guy with the outdated equipment drools for, in other words.
But in general, the paper finds, "network management is a service that employs a variety of tools, applications, and devices to assist human network managers in monitoring and maintaining networks." That's a pretty safe, general definition.
Things in network management really kicked off in the early 1980s. That was when the tremendous expansion in the area of network deployment took place, the paper recounted: "As companies realized the cost benefits and productivity gains created by network technology, they began to add networks and expand existing networks almost as rapidly as new network technologies and products were introduced."
So by the mid-1980s, certain companies were experiencing growing pains from deploying many different, "and sometimes incompatible," network technologies.
Predictably problems abounded. The staffing requirements alone for managing some of the larger networks "created a crisis for many organizations. An urgent need arose for automated network management integrated across diverse environments."
Today most network management architectures "use the same basic structure and set of relationships. End stations (managed devices), such as computer systems and other network devices, run software that enables them to send alerts when they recognize problems -- for example, when one or more user-determined thresholds are exceeded," the paper says.
Management entities also can poll end stations to check the values of certain variables: "Polling can be automatic or user-initiated, but agents in the managed devices respond to all polls."
