Policy Support

Chapter 3 introduced PBNM in the context of automatic traffic engineering and explained some of its advantages. In general network management terms, policies can be used to automatically solve recurring problems, such as certain types of failures or other important events. A simple example is traffic thresholds. The user can set a threshold on an interface for the number of packets received. If the threshold is exceeded, then a notification is generated and the NMS can divert some of the traffic. A simple rule is defined to achieve this based on the setting and crossing of a traffic threshold.

NNM Policy Support

Apart from some fairly basic policies (such as issuing emails in response to certain events), NNM requires third-party products to implement policy handling. Policy-based applications provide features such as

• Application prioritization, that is, certain key applications are assigned a specified level of service according to business priority.

• Enterprisewide policy distribution, for example, access to servers and NEs.

• Service-level mappings, such as those provided by technologies like IEEE 802.1p and IP DiffServ, can be used to deliver consistent quality of service across the network.

• User-based security policies similar to the user-based security model of SNMPv3.

• CIM/DEN, LDAP, SNMP, and so on.

An example of a third-party application providing such features is Avaya CajunRules Policy Manager. We mention this product for reference only in order to assist further research into this important area.