1. Advanced Network Management
Prof. Chadi Assi
EV7.635

2. Text Books and References
Network Management: Principles and Practice: Mani Subramanian, Addison Wesley,
ISBN:
SNMP, SNMPv2, SNMPv3 and RMON1 and 2:
William Stallings, 3rd edition, Addison Wesley, ISBN:
Network Management: A Practical Perspective Leinwand, A. and Fang K., Addison Wesley
Essential SNMP
Douglas Mauro and Kevin Schmidt, O’Reilly
online version:
Other RFCs and Research papers

3. Course Outline Network Management: Principles, Standards and Models.
Computer Networks and the Internet
Application, Transport and Network layer
Network Management Protocols and Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1).
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
Structure of Management Information (SMI), Management Information Base (MIB).
SNMPv2
SNMPv3
Remote Monitoring (RMON), RMON 1 and 2.

4. Course Outline
OSI Systems management, Telecommunications Management Network (TMN), and ATM Network Management. .
Network Management Applications (Configuration, Performance, Fault and Security management).
Distributed Management Framework (management by delegation, mobile agent based management, etc.)
CORBA based management, web based management, JMX and DMTF.

5. Course Outline Marking Scheme:
Midterm         %
Midterm         %
Project                         25%
Assignments %
More info:

6. Background
Today’s “Information Infrastructure” (or simply the Internet) is increasingly growing
large number of interconnected heterogeneous sub-networks and a wide range of distributed applications (100s or 1000s of interacting hardware/software components)
Other complex systems requiring monitoring, control
jet airplane
nuclear power plant
Others
In such a large network, many things can go wrong
therefore disabling the network or a portion of it and degrading performance to an unacceptable level!

7. Background
During the old days, a network can be managed by using only human efforts!
In a small system, running few “pings” may help locating the problem
As the Internet becomes a large global infrastructure, automated network management tools are essential
Standardized tools that can be used across a broad spectrum of product types are also needed
Therefore, a network management system (NMS) is a collection of tools for network monitoring and control
Just as an airplane cockpit allows a pilot to monitor, control, analyze, configure, etc.

8. Network Management Failure of Interface Card
A network admin by monitoring and analyzing network traffic may detect problems in any interface card and replace it
e.g., increase in checksum errors in frames sent out by this interface;
Host Monitoring
A network admin periodically checks to see if all hosts are operational

9. Network Management Monitoring traffic/resource deployment
By monitoring link utilization, a network admin may determine system bottleneck and provision higher bandwidth link instead, to avoid congestion

10. Network Management Rapid changes in routing tables
If detected may prevent instabilities in routing and hence prevent a network from going down
Intrusion detection
Network admin requests to be notified when traffic is destined to/arrives from a suspicious source
Detect the existence of a certain type of traffic (e.g., security attacks)

11. What is Network Management?*
"Network management includes the deployment, integration and coordination of the hardware, software, and human elements to monitor, test, poll, configure, analyze, evaluate, and control the network and element resources to meet the real-time, operational performance, and Quality of Service requirements at a reasonable cost."
*T.Saydam, T. Magendaz “From Networks and Network Management into Service and Service Management” Journal of Networks and System Management, Vol.4, No.4, Dec. 1996

12. What is Network Management?
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has created a network management model. 5 areas of network management are classified
Performance Management
Fault Management
Configuration Management
Security Management
Accounting Management
This classification has gained broad acceptance by vendors of both standardized and proprietary NMS

13. Performance Management
Goal:
Quantify, measure, report, analyze, and control the performance of different network components (such as routers, hosts, as well as end to end abstractions, such as a path through the network)
Two functional categories
Monitoring (ability to monitor and track activities on the network)
Controlling (ability to make adjustments to improve network performance).
Measuring Performance
Throughput (whether reduced to unacceptable level!)
Response time (i.e. network delays)
Utilization
Error rates (identify bottlenecks)
Availability

14. Fault Management Goal:
Log, detect, and respond to fault conditions in the network
Immediate* handling of transient network failures (link, host, router hardware or software outages)
Faults are to be distinguished
from Errors
A fault is an abnormal condition and requires management attention to repair (e.g. link cut)
An Error is a single event! (e.g. single bit error on a line)
*performance management takes longer term view in the face of varying traffic demands and occasional network device failures.

15. Illustrative scenario
A client application exchanges data over a TCP connection with a DB server
Distinct domains each administered by a different organization

16. Illustrative scenario
Problem scenario
A clock at an interface in WAN2 that supports T3 link loses SYNC 4 times a second for 0.25 ms
 intermittent noise causing loss of 0.1% of T3 capacity
 this small noise causes bit errors in a large number of packets routed over C-D
 Bit errors cause packet losses, either at routers (if IP header corrupted) or at destinations

17. Illustrative scenario
 performance of TCP connection degrades due to packet loss
 TCP sender interprets this as congestion and hence reduces its window
TCP increases its window gradually until new packet loss
However due to the noise, the TCP window will not increase
DB transactions by client will last longer
DB server performance will degrade due to records lock-out, causing frequent aborts for remote transactions

18. Configuration Management
Consists of the following steps:
Gather information about current network, maintain an up-to-date inventory of all network components
Use that data to modify the configuration of the network device (reconfiguration*)
Goal:
Allow a network manager to track which devices are on the network and the hardware and software configurations of these devices.
* Reconfiguration of a network is often desired in response to performance evaluation or in support of network upgrade, fault recovery, or security checks.

19. Security Management Goal:
Security at different levels
Physical & Data Link Levels  Encryption
Network Level  packet filters
Application Level  (host, user and key) authentication
Popular Level  Firewalls & VPNs
Goal:
Control access to network resources according to well defined policy.
Identifying sensitive information (e.g., network management information) and protecting it

20. Accounting Management
A network manager should track the use of network resources
A user may be abusing his access privilege and burdening the network at the expense of other users. (e.g., a user may be violating his service contract)
Planning for network growth
Goal:
Specify, log, and control user and device access to network resources
…usage quotas, usage-based charging, the allocation of resource-access privileges…
…Accounting reports should be generated periodically

21. Infrastructure for Network Management
definitions:
managing entity
agent
data
managing
entity
data
managed devices contain
managed objects whose
data is gathered into a
Management Information
Base (MIB)
managed device
agent
data
network
management
protocol
managed device
agent
data
agent
data
managed device
managed device