Goal of Network Management: - i. 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.

ii. 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.

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

iv. Figure4 presents a top-down view of network management functions. It comprises three major groups: (a) network and service provisioning, network and (b) service operations, and (c) network I&M.

v. 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.

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

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

viii. 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.

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

x. 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 Groupings