Database Models and Architectures for Hybrid Network Management

Abstract

As the complexity of communication networks increases, there should be commensurate advancements in the tolls used to manage these networks. A Management Information Base (MIB) is a repository for information on all the network resources, services and customers and forms the heart of any Network Management Systems. Unfortunately the existing data models for networks are not powerful enough to represent all the heterogeneous resources available today, and at the same time capture all the network management functionality in a unified fashion. A related problem is that no model exists for storing sensor data collected from the network. Hence even though large amounts of data are collected from the network today, they aren't used to improve network performance. In this work we have developed data models for both of the above mentioned problems. Another issue that is of growing importance is the absence of an architecture for the interoperability of heterogeneous database systems. Several companies would like to protect their investments in independent network management applications built on diverse platforms, and at the same time be able to integrate them. In this work we present an architecture for database integration. By developing a Configuration Management application on such a testbed, we demonstrate the ability of this architecture to perform the role of a ﲭiddleware .