Multiplex communications – Network configuration determination
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-11
2002-06-11
Vincent, David R. (Department: 2661)
Multiplex communications
Network configuration determination
C709S224000, C709S242000, C714S048000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06404743
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing an enhanced Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) for network and systems management. The invention is suitable for use with communication networks, including LANs, WANs, and internets.
The following acronyms are used in this application:
SNMP Simple network management protocol
ASN Abstract Syntax Notation
CCITT International Telegraph And Telephone
Consultative Committee (Translation)
CMIP Common Management Information Protocol
CMISE Common Management Information Service Elements
EFD Event Forwarding Discriminator
FDDI Fiber Distributed Data Interface
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
IP Internet Protocol
ITU International Telecommunications Union
LAN Local Area Network
LD Log Discriminator
LMI Local Management Interface
MIB Management Information Base
NMF Network Management Forum
OSI Open Systems Interconnection
Q
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A TMN interface specification
RFC Request For Comment, published by the IETF
SMI Structure of Management Information
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
TCP Transaction Control Protocol
TMN Telecommunications Management Network
UDP User Datagram Protocol
WAN Wide Area Network
Management of a system such as a communications network is concerned with supervising and controlling the system so that it fulfills the requirements of both the owners and users of the system. This includes the long-term planning required for the system to evolve to provide improved performance, and to incorporate new functionality or new technology. Management may also involve accounting to ensure that resources are fairly allocated to users, or to charge users for use of services. The management of a system may be performed by a combination of human and automated components. The term “manager” is used to refer to any entity, human or automated, that can perform management activities in a communications network or system. The manager encompasses a management station, and a human operator interface, discussed below.
As part of the online control of the system, one or more managers must perform the following activities:
Monitor the system to obtain up-to-date status information and to receive event reports from the agents;
Interpret the overall policy pertaining to the goals or requirements of the organization that owns the system to make decisions about what behavior is required from the system; and
Perform control actions on the system resources to change their behavior and implement the management decisions.
As the number and variety of communications networks and services has grown, so has the diversity of management needs. In the past, these needs were satisfied by the manufacturer of the network equipment, or by network operator specific solutions. The resultant proliferation of incompatible management solutions has complicated the management of services and networks supported by different manufacturers' network equipment. It has also severely restricted the ability of network and service providers to exchange information in electronic form.
It has been realized that the communications industry would benefit from the existence of a consistent set of standards that would permit interoperability between a broad range of network equipment and management systems while allowing operators the freedom to adopt various implementation strategies. Network and service providers also have realized that they would benefit from the ability to exchange information electronically to provide services.
Standardization of management interactions provides obvious benefits of being able to manage multi-vendor components from a single management platform. Many different standards have been and are being introduced to cope with the complexities of network and distributed systems management. They include:
Internet Management Standards;
Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) Standards;
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Management Standards; and
Network Management Forum (NMF) Standards.
The most widely accepted management standard is the Internet SNMP set of standards, which was originally defined in the framework currently known as SNMPv1:
Structure and Identification of Management Information (SMI) for TCP/IP-based networks—RFC 1155 describes how managed objects contained in a
Management Information Base (MIB) are defined; Management Information Base (MIB) for Network Management of TCP/IP-based Internets—RFC 1213 describes the managed objects contained in the MIB; and
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)—RFC 1157 defines the protocol used to manage the managed objects.
The model of network management that is used for SNMP consists of the following basic elements:
Management station,
Management agent;
Management information base; and
Network management protocol.
Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed the Management Information Base, or MIB. Objects in the MIB are defined using the subset of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) defined in the SMI. In particular, each object type is named by an OBJECT IDENTIFIER, an administratively assigned name. The object type together with an object instance serves to uniquely identify a specific instantiation of the object. For human convenience, we often use a textual string, termed the “object descriptor”, to refer to the object type.
Most computer and, communications equipment in the world today is SNMP manageable. SNMP is usually supported by the standard Internet User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Internet Protocol (IP) over most existing communications environments such as serial links, Ethernet, FDDI, ATM, etc. A functionally richer version of SNMP, SNMPv2 has been introduced in 1993. The security and administration framework associated with SNMPv2 has not found wide acceptance and is currently in the process of being replaced in the SNMPv3 framework which consists of SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 and a new administrative and security framework.
The SNMP Network Management Framework presently consists of three major components. They are:
(1) the SNMPv2 SMI, described in RFC 1902—the mechanisms used for describing and naming objects for the purpose of management;
(2) the SNMPv1 MIB-II, described in RFC 1213—the core set of managed objects for the Internet suite of protocols; and
(3) the protocol, SNMPv1 RFC 1157 and/or SNMPv2 RFC 1905—the protocol for accessing managed objects.
The Telecommunications-Management Network (TMN) standard was developed by the CCITT (ITU-T) to provide an architecture to achieve an interconnection between various types of management systems and telecommunications equipment for the exchange of management information over standardized interfaces. TMN is largely based on OSI management standards and includes:
Principles for TMN (ITU-T M.3010 and M.3020), which defines the architecture;
Generic Network Information model (ITU-T M.3100);
Management Services (ITU-T M.3200);
Management Function (ITU-T M.3400); and
Protocol Profiles for Management Interfaces (ITU-T Q.811, Q.812, Q.773).
It is intended that all networks, telecommunications services, and major type of equipment may be managed by TMN.
TMN functions exchange management information by means of the ITU-T X-700 (OSI system management) standards. Each software component in a TMN layer represents itself and the resources it manages to the layer above as a managed object. The interactions between manager and agent are defined by means of CMISE/CMIP. The organization of the information architecture, the MIB, contains managed objects for specific technologies that can be refined from the general template provided in ITU-T M-3100, the Generic Network Information Model.
All TMN communication is based on the Agent-Manager paradigm. The Q
3
interface relies on the OSI management model using the OSI Common Management Information protocol. CMIP is used between Common Management Information Service Elements (CMISE) to provide Common Management Information Service (CMIS).
However, while SNMP-based management is commonly used because of its simplicity and resulti
General Instrument Corporation
Lipsitz Barry R.
McAllister Douglas M.
Phunkulh Bob A.
Vincent David R.
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