Power Systems Monitoring and Control using Telecom Network Management Standards

Historically, different solutions have been developed for power systems control and telecommunications network management environments. The former was characterized by proprietary solutions, while the latter has been involved for years in a strong standardization process guided by criteria of openness. Today, power systems control standardization is in progress, but it is at an early stage compared to the telecommunications management area, especially in terms of information modeling. Today, control equipment tends to exhibit more computational power, and communication lines have increased their performance. These trends hint at some conceptual convergence between power systems and telecommunications networks from a management perspective. This convergence leads us to suggest the application of well-established telecommunications management standards for power systems control. This paper shows that this is a real medium-to-long term possibility

A Survey of Distributed Enterprise Network and Systems Management Paradigms

Since the mid 1990s, network and systems management has steadily evolved from centralized paradigms, where the management application runs on a single management station, to distributed paradigms, where it is distributed over many nodes. In this survey, our goal is to classify all these paradigms, especially the new ones, in order to help network and systems administrators design a management application, and choose between mobile code, distributed objects, intelligent agents, etc. Step by step, we build an enhanced taxonomy based on four criteria: the delegation granularity, the semantic richness of the information model, the degree of specification of a task, and the degree of automation of management

A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

Annotated Typology of Distributed Network Management Paradigms

Over the past few years, network management has steadily evolved from a centralized model, where all the management processing takes place on a single network management station, to distributed models, where management is distributed over a number, potentially large, of nodes. Among distributed models, one, the weakly distributed hierarchical model, has been around for several years, whereas a flurry of new ones, based on mobile code, distributed objects or cooperative agents, have only recently emerged. Which of these techniques will eventually win ? Will several ones have to coexist ? How do they compare to each other ? In order to provide a framework to analyze these issues, this paper presents a comprehensive typology of all network management paradigms known to date, whether they have been successfully implemented already or whether they are still confined to the research community. By comparing these models with those used in another research field, enterprise management, we delineate a common trend of evolution, and attempt to predict what the future holds for network management. Keywords : Distributed Network Management, Organizational Models, Mobile Code, Management by Delegation, Distributed Objects, Intelligent Agents

A Survey of Distributed Network and Systems Management Paradigms

Since the mid 1990s, network and systems management has steadily evolved from a centralized paradigm, where all the management processing takes place in a single management station, to distributed paradigms, where management is distributed over a potentially large number of nodes. Some of these paradigms, epitomized by the SNMPv2 and CMIP protocols, have been around for several years, whereas a flurry of new ones, based on mobile code, distributed objects or intelligent agents, only recently emerged. The goal of this survey is to classify all major network and systems management paradigms known to date, in order to help network and systems administrators design a management application. In the first part of the survey, we present a simple typology, based on a single criterion: the organizational model. In this typology, all paradigms are grouped into four types: centralized paradigms, weakly distributed hierarchical paradigms, strongly distributed hierarchical paradigms and cooperative paradigms. In the second part of the survey, we gradually build an enhanced typology, based on four criteria: delegation granularity, semantic richness of the information model, degree of specification of a task, and degree of automation of management. Finally, we show how to use our typologies to select a management paradigm in a given context. KEYWORDS Distributed Network Management, Distributed Systems Management, Integrated Management, Mobile Code, Distributed Objects, Intelligent Agents, Typology

Converting CORBA Based Fault Management to SNMP

Vianhallinta pitää sisällään toimia, joilla havaitaan, eristetään ja korjataan tietoliikenneverkon epänormaaleja toimintoja. ITU-T:n tietoliikenteen hallintaverkkoarkkitehtuuri koostuu viidestä tasosta, joista kaksi alimmaista, elementinhallintataso sekä verkkoelementtitaso, keskittyvät verkkoelementtien hallintaan. Useita protokollia on hyödynnetty vianhallintaan näillä tasoilla. CORBA-pohjainen vianhallinta on ollut yleinen 3GPP:n ratkaisusarjaa hyödyntävissä verkkoelementeissä ja elementinhallintajärjestelmissä. Mutta tietoliikenneteollisuuden siirtyessä kohti all-IP-maailmaa, SNMP on jälleen uudelleen vahvistamassa asemaansa hallitsevana verkkoelementtien monitorointiprotokollana. Täten verkkonsa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamista tutkiva verkko-operaattori voisi harkita CORBA-pohjaisten verkkoelementtiensä konvertointia käyttämään SNMP:tä. Tämä työ tutkii tämänkaltaisen konversion edellytyksiä ja yksityiskohtia. Kirjallisuustutkimuksella otetaan selvää vianhallinnan eri puolista ja vertaillaan CORBA:a ja SNMP:tä konvertterin suunnittelua varten. Todiste konversiokonseptin toimivuudesta saadaan yksinkertaistetun implementaation avulla. Implementaatio osoittaa konvertterin olevan melko helposti rakennettavissa, ja että konvertteri voi toimia joko CORBA:n tai SNMP:n toimintaperiaatteella. Konvertteri mahdollistaa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamisen lisäämättä huomattavaa viivettä, rasitusta kaistaleveyskäytölle tai kuluttamatta runsaasti muistiresursseja. Tämän työn tulokset antavat aihetta esitettyjen konseptien laajemmalle tutkimukselle, sekä konvertterin laajentamiselle kattamaan konfiguraation hallinnan. Tähän tosin SNMP ei ehkä ole suositelluin protokolla.Fault management involves tasks to enable the detection, isolation and correction of abnormal operation of the telecommunication network. Telecommunications management network architecture of ITU-T consists of five layers, of which the bottom two, the element management layer and the network element layer, are focused on the management of network elements. For fault management tasks at these layers, several protocols have been utilised. CORBA based fault management has been common in network elements and element management systems utilising solution sets of 3GPP. But as the telecommunications industry moves towards an all-IP world, SNMP has yet again become the predominant protocol for monitoring network elements. A network operator looking into unifying the fault management of its network could consider converting the CORBA based network element to using SNMP. This thesis studies the requirements and details of this kind of conversion. With a literary study, aspects of fault management and comparison of CORBA and SNMP are scoped for designing a CORBA-SNMP converter. A proof of concept for the conversion is obtained with a simplified implementation. The implementation shows that a converter is quite easy to construct, and the converter can perform with operating principle of either CORBA or SNMP. The converter is also able to provide fault management unification without adding considerable delay, strain on bandwidth usage or consuming memory resources. The results of this thesis give grounds for studying the proposed concepts further and also broaden the converter to cover configuration management. Though for configuration management SNMP may not be the preferred protocol

Managing Next Generation Networks (NGNs) based on the Service-Oriented Architechture (SOA). Design, Development and testing of a message-based Network Management platform for the integration of heterogeneous management systems.

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) aim to provide a unified network infrastructure to offer multimedia data and telecommunication services through IP convergence. NGNs utilize multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies, creating a converged packet-switched network infrastructure, where service-related functions are separated from the transport functions. This requires significant changes in the way how networks are managed to handle the complexity and heterogeneity of NGNs. This thesis proposes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based management framework that integrates heterogeneous management systems in a loose coupling manner. The key benefit of the proposed management architecture is the reduction of the complexity through service and data integration. A network management middleware layer that merges low level management functionality with higher level management operations to resolve the problem of heterogeneity was proposed. A prototype was implemented using Web Services and a testbed was developed using trouble ticket systems as the management application to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed framework. Test results show the correcting functioning of the system. It also concludes that the proposed framework fulfils the principles behind the SOA philosophy

Developing a generic network planning interface

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this documentDissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007.Computer Scienceunrestricte