1. A Transactional Approach to Configuring Telecommunications Services Tim Kempster (tdk@dcs.ed.ac.uk)

2. Changing Environment Telecommunications providers now route voice, data, fax and broadband services over wide area IP networks. Routers (Network Nodes) are becoming more intelligent and programmable e.g. Intel IXP1200 vs ASIC. How do we manage and reconfigure these Networks?

3. Simple Network Model MIB A Transport Medium (Fiber, satellite, microwave) Network Nodes (routers, switches, relays)

4. Current Management Techniques Each Network Node (NN) has a MIB which contains fields that can be read and or written to. Currently, SNMP supports GetRequest and SetRequest Methods on fields in the MIB.

5. Motivation for a Transactional Approach A reconfiguration task often requires atomic changes to, and reads form, MIBs at several network nodes. When reading several MIB values it is useful to see a consistent view. We should not read the partial updates of other reconfiguration tasks.

6. The Solution