Network Management in

Practice
Telephone network
• Characteristics of telephone network
• Reliable – does what is expected of it
• Dependable – always there when you
need it
• Good quality (connection) – hearing each
other well

• Reasons
• Good planning, design and
implementation
• Good operation and management of the
network
Operation Systems / NOC
Operating Systems /
NOC
• Monitor telephone network parameters
• Transmission loss, call blockage, etc.
• Real-time management of network
• Link not meeting QoS are removed before
customer notices poor quality
• Traffic measurement systems measure call
blockage.
• Operation systems are distributed at central
office
• Network management done centrally from
the Network Operations Centre (NOC)
Internet Configuration
Common network problems
• Loss of connectivity (Link, Node, Interface)
• Duplicate IP address
• Intermittent problems
• A system interface problem in shared medium
• Network of configuration issues
• Non-problems
• The cause of failure is a mystery. (Turn off, Turn on)
• Performance problems
• The cause of long network delay and increasing the response time
Network management
Goal of network management

• To meet user’s desired Quality of Services (QoS) in a

network
• To meet the goal management should either formally or
informally contract a Service Level Agreements (SLA) with
the users.
Top-down view of NM functions
To-down view of network management function
presents three major groups:

1. Network provision
2. Network operations
3. Network Installation and Maintenance (I&M)
Top-down view of
NM functions
Networking Provisioning (NP)
• NP consists of network planning and designing.
• Keep track of new technologies and introduces them
if needed.
• While design a network, future traffic should be in
consideration.
• Determination of what is needed
• Requirement analysis (performance, coverage, SLA).
Networking Provisioning (NP)
• Modification of network provisioning could be initiated
by management decisions.
• Network management tools are useful to the
engineering group in gathering statistics and studying
the trend of traffic pattern for planning purpose.
• Good planning will result in providing desired QoS,
reduced Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operation
Expenditure (OPEX).
 Network
Operations
1. Fault Management
• Manage network problems to keep the networking running
reliably and efficiently.

• Fault management process involves the following steps:-

• Detecting the problem symptoms.
• Isolating the problem.
• Fixing the problem automatically (if possible) or manually.
• Logging the detection and resolution of the problem.
1. Fault Management (Cont.)
• Trouble Ticket Administration
• Trouble ticket administration is the administrative part of fault
management and is used to track problem in network
• All problem need to be tracked until resolved
• Periodic analysis of the data establishes pattern of the problems
for the follows-up action.
2. Configuration Management
• Monitors network and system configurations information and
stores it in a configuration management database.
• The maintenance of this database allows network administrators
to track hardware, software and other network resources.
2. Configuration Management (Cont.)
• Why is it important?
• Each network devices has a variety of information associated with it.
• Software version information for the operating system, protocol software or
management software.
• Hardware version information for the interfaces or hardware controllers.
• Contact information indicating who to contact if problems with the device arise.
• Location information indicating the physical location of the device.
• Total management of the entire network device configurations through a simple
central console can be possible
• If something goes wrong in the network, the administrator can view the history
of changes, spot the error easily and set things right
3. Performance Management
• Maintains internetwork performance at acceptable levels by
measuring and managing various network performance variables
• Performance variable includes network throughput, delay, line
utilization, packet drops and others.
• Performance management involves following basic steps:-
• Collecting performance associated data and store somewhere in database.
• Analysing data to understand whether network performing properly.
• Analysing data to understand traffic demand different parts of day (Peak
hours, off – peak hours)
• Determining appropriate performance thresholds for each variable so that
exceeding these threshold indicates a network problem (traffic congestion,
link failure or node failure) worthy of attention.
4. Accounting Management
• Accounting management is all about the functions that facilitates
organizations to collect revenue and get credit for the communication
services they provide and to keep track of their use.
• Accounting management is at the core of the economics of providing
communications services.
• Accounting management need to have highly robust, highest
availability and reliability
• With poor accounting management a service provider might end up
losing revenue.
5. Security Management
• Security policies for networks
• A network security policy should interpret the overall
Information Security Policy in the context of the networked
environments.
• Define what is responsibility of the network and what is not
• Describes what security is to be available from the network
• Describes rules for using the network
• Describes who is responsible for the management and
security of the network
5. Security Management
• Possible basis for more detailed policy (needs lots of refinement
to produce final document) for your organization:
• What information?
• What resources?
• Who is authorized and for what?
• What about availability?
5. Security Management
• The security life-cycle
• A generic model for the security life cycle, including network
security issues can include the following steps:
• Define security policy (the types of policy the network wants to
impose)
• Analyze security threats (according to policy) and associated
risks given existing safeguards
• Define security services to meet/reduce threats in order to
bring risks down to acceptable levels
• Define security mechanisms to provide services
• Provide on-going management of security
5. Security Management
• Access control
• Main goal is to prevent access of unauthorized users.
• Define access control rule (e.g. firewall which packets to filter)
• Try avoid different cyber attacks (DoS, DDoS)
• Prevents network sabotage (Intentional or unintentional)
• If contributes in establishing a secured network environment
• Partitioning network resources into authorized and unauthorized
areas
• Monitoring, policing and logging user access to resources in those
area.
5. Security Management
• Security Threats for networks
• A threat is:
• A person, things or idea who poses some danger to an
assets (in terms of confidentiality, integrity, availability or
legitimate use)
• Possible means by which a security policy may be breached
• An attack is a realization of threats
• Safeguard are measures to protect against threats
• Vulnerabilities are weakness in safeguards
5. Security Management
• Risks
• Risk is a measure of the cost of a vulnerability (taking into
account probability of a successful attack)
• Risk analysis determines whether expenditure on new or
better safeguards is warranted
• Risk analysis can be quantitative or qualitative
5. Security Management
• Threats
• Threats can be classified as:
• Deliberate (hacker penetration)
• Accidental (sensitive file being send to the wrong
address)
• Deliberate threats can be further sub-divided :
• Passive (monitoring, wire-tapping)
• Active (changing the value of a financial transaction)
5. Security Management
• Security monitoring
• Periodical data collection (sudden performance failure
could be considered as attack in a network)
• Security event collection
• Future threat prediction
• Event analysis, correlation, alert generation and alert
handling