• A network management system (NMS) is a set of hardware and/or software tools that allow an IT professional to supervise the individual components of a network within a larger network management framework.

• Network management system components assist with:

1. Network device discovery - identifying what devices are present on a network.

2. Network device monitoring - monitoring at the device level to determine the health of network components and the extent to which their performance matches capacity plans and intra-enterprise service-level agreements (SLAs).

3. Network performance analysis - tracking performance indicators such as bandwidth utilization, packet loss, latency, availability and uptime of routers, switches and other Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) -enabled devices.

4. Intelligent notifications - configurable alerts that will respond to specific network scenarios by paging, emailing, calling or texting a network administrator.

• We define network management as management of the network comprising nodes and links, and system management as managing system resources, such as central processor usage, disk usage, and application processes. Service management deals with services provided by organizations to customers. Service management is an extension of network and systems.

• Network management is a service that employs a variety of tools, applications, and devices to assist human network managers in the control and maintenance of a network.

• Network management includes the deployment, integration and coordination of the hardware, software and human elements to monitor, test, poll, configure, analyze, evaluate the network resources to meet the real-time, operational performance and QoS requirements at a reasonable cost.

Goals of N/W Management:

• The goal of network management is to ensure that the users of network are provided IT services with a quality of service that they expect.

• Toward meeting this goal, the management should establish a policy to either formally or informally contract an SLA with users.

• From a business administration point of view, network management involves strategic and tactical planning of engineering, operations, and maintenance of network and network services for current and future needs at minimum overall cost.

• There needs to be a well-established interaction between the various groups performing these functions.

• Figure presents a top-down view of network management functions. It comprises three major groups:

(a) Network and service Provisioning,

(b) Network service Operations

(c) Network I & M (Installation & Maintanance)

• It is worth considering the different functions as belonging to specific administrative groups, although there are other ways of assigning responsibilities based on local organizational structure. Network pro-visioning is the primary responsibility of the Engineering group.

• The Customer Relations group deals with clients and subscribers in providing services planned and designed by the Engineering group.

• Network I&M is the primary responsibility of the Plant Facilities group.

• Normal daily operations are the function of the Network Operations group, which controls and administers a NOC. This is the nerve center of network management operations.

• The functions of NOC are primarily concerned with network operations: its secondary responsibilities are network provisioning and network I & M.

• The associated service operations are handled by a subscriber operation center (SOC) and customer relations management (CRM). Our focus here is on NOC.

Network Management Functional Group

Definition of network management:

We define network management as management of the network comprising nodes and links, and system management as managing system resources, such as central processor usage, disk usage, and application processes. Service management deals with services provided by organizations to customers. Service management is an extension of network and systems.

• Network management is a service that employs a variety of tools, applications, and devices to assist human network managers in the control and maintenance of a network.

• Network management includes the deployment, integration and coordination of the hardware, software and human elements to monitor, test, poll, configure, analyze, evaluate the network resources to meet the real-time, operational performance and QoS requirements at a reasonable cost.

• The combination of hardware and software used to monitor and administer a network is called Network Management System (NMS).

For goals of network management Refer May 2014 solution.