7.3 Background

Network management consists of the set of functions to control, plan, allocate, deploy, coordinate, and monitor network resources. Network management has often been an afterthought in most network architectures. For example, most network architectures and designs were developed without a focus on users being malicious, which was generally true until a few years ago. Consider, for example, the changes that have been made in SNMP security. Today, and in the future, networks are a resource whose integrity must be measurable and verifiable.

The network management architecture, as with the other component architectures, begins with the requirements and flow analyses. Areas that should be addressed during the analysis process include:

Deciding which network management protocol to apply
Implementing high-level asset management as part of the network management architecture
Reconfiguring the network often to meet various different requirements
Monitoring the entire system from a single location or device
Testing service-provider compliance with service-level agreements (SLAs) and policies
Proactively monitoring (discovering performance problems before users, applications, and devices are affected by them)
Fulfilling requirements for out-of-band access

We will begin this chapter by defining and characterizing management for a network architecture and discuss how to plan for monitoring, configuring, and troubleshooting the planned network. We will then examine network management protocols and instrumentation requirements. This will lead to considerations for developing the network management architecture.