1. What are the contributions in this paper?
Due to this growing complexity and the disparity among management systems for individual sub networks, efficient network management systems have become critical to the current and future success of telecommunications companies.. This paper addresses a research and development effort which focuses on prototyping configuration management, since that is the central process of network management and all other network management functions must be built upon it.. The resulting design concept follows open standards such as Open Systems Interconnection ( OSI ) and incorporates object oriented programming methodology to associate data with functions, permit customization, and provide an open architecture environment.. As part of this effort, HNS together with a team from the Institute for Systems Research ( ISR ) at the University of Maryland at College Park, developed a prototype system for managing HNS Integrated Satellite Business System ( ISBN ) systems.. This research effort is supported by HNS, Maryland Industrial Partnership Programs ( MIPS ), and by NASA grant # NAGW-2777S for the establishment of a NASA Center for the Commercial Development of Space ( CCDS ).. Success with the use of OO techniques and databases within Computer Aided Design ( CAD ) systems provides ample evidence that this approach should provide significant advantages within network management as well.. The use of informative, intuitive graphical displays should provide the user with a better understanding of the configuration tasks being addressed which in turn will lead to faster task completion and higher quality decisions.. This research and development effort resulted in a new data model for network management, a technique for embedding rules and constraints within OO database systems, and in a two graphical user interface techniques for representing and manipulating hierarchies.. Some specific features of this model are: • a very general link model that allows for the representation within a common framework of a wide range of link types, including satellite links, point-to-point physical terrestrial links and pointto-point virtual links such as calls and sessions ; • a flexible approach to handling protocol layers within heterogeneous networks, in other words, this methodology allows for the ready analysis of complex calls that are routed partially over a satellite network and partially over a terrestrial ATM network ; • support for the management of network software, allowing for the tracking of software downloads and reboots, distribution of updates and versions, etc.. Furthermore, standards bodies have committed to the OO model for telecommunications network management.
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