Monitoring & Control of Network Activity

Monitoring & Control of Network Activity Chapter 8

Chapter Objective • Network Management • Organization Management • Risk Assessment & Management • Service Management • Performance Management • Problem Management • Security Management • Change Management • Capacity Management Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Network Management • Two primary objectives of network management are • To satisfy system users. • To provide cost effective solutions to an organization’s telecommunication requirements. • Network management has two side • Organization management • Technology management Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Organization Management • Organization Management require classical functions of • Planning • Organizing • Staffing • Directing • Controlling Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Planning • There are three levels of planning • Operational planning: deals with day-to-day operations of the organization and its resource usage. The time period is only days or weeks. • Tactical planning: deals with acquisition, training, inventory purchase and storage of resources for future operations. The time period is usually a year. • Strategic planning: deals with the long term vision of the organization. The time period is 1-5 years. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Organizing • The main function of organizing is establishing the relationship among various entities of an organization. • Organizing can be done at an operational level or strategic level. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Staffing • The main function of staffing is the acquisition, retention, and training of qualified personal who can plan, define, install, operate, and maintain the communication technologies to support the business. • The level of staffing depends on the complexity of the communication network and the maintained of the network. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Staff Group • Data Communication Manager: person who has the ability to grasp technical and business needs. This person will interpret the business need and direct other people and vendors to develop a data communication plan. • Designer & Implementers: this group consist of engineers who find solutions to the business problems and opportunities to support the solution. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Staff Group • Network Operation Staff: this group will carry on the day-to-day activities of the communication network. They must be technically competent to resolve any issue quickly. • Administrative Support Staff: this group is responsible for administrative work like accounting, inventory, and general administrative task. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Directing • Directing is a management function, that involves supervisory work of getting people to successfully perform the required tasks. • The primary skill is dealing with the people to get complex jobs done; this requires leadership. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Controlling • In Controlling, we control the usage of data communication network. • This involves inventory management, bandwidth usage, security and disaster recovery management issues. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Telecommunication Management Versus Telecommunication Capability • Telecommunication Management: This involves the management of telecommunication functions and staff. It requires organization, planning and leadership skills to get the work done. • Telecommunication Capabilities: They arevery technical in nature. They are hardware, software and engineering oriented. It requires people with special skills are required to carry out these tasks. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Network Operations • Network operations is the management of the physical network resources. • Employees in this group monitor the network traffic flow, paths, routers etc. • Network operations are carried out from an off-site location, generally a central control room. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Network Management • Network management allows network managers to see the real-time operation of the network. • Network management software allows the network managers to remotely observer and control the network parameters. • Network management software is very important in recording and reporting for service level agreement (SLA). Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

SNMP and CMIP • SNMP and CMIP are the network management protocols that facilitate the exchange of management data among network nodes. • SNMP is an application layer protocol that outlines the formal structure for communication among network devices. • SNMP is used in an environment in which multiple management stations control devices remotely over the network. • SNMP allows the network managers to get the status of devices and to set or initialize them. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

SNMP and CMIP • Important components of SNMP • Containing details of how every piece of information regarding the device is represented. • Defining the hardware and software elements to be monitored. • Contains a control console to which network monitoring and management information is reported. • CMIP is a new and complex protocol developed by ISO to exchange messages among network components. • SNMP and CMIP are not interoperable Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Risk Assessment & Management • Risk assessment involves a methodological investigation of the organizations resources, personal, procedures and objectives to determine points of weakness. • Risk management is the science and art of recognizing the existence of threats, determining their consequences to resources, and applying modification factors in cost-effective manner to keep adverse consequences within bounds. • Risk management is the analysis and subsequent actions taken to ensure that organizations can continue to operate under any foreseeable conditions, such as war, accident, labor strike and natural calamities. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Service Management • Service management is a set of technologies and organization principles for monitoring the interrelationships of network component. • Many organization have achieved increases in productivity, user satisfaction and reduced downtime. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Performance Management • Communication network are designed and implemented to provide some services to an organization or a customer. • These services are mutually agreed and formally documented in a SLA. • While developing a SLA factors such as total cost of ownership (TOC) and quality of service (QoS) must be addressed. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Performance Management • Committed information rate (CIR) is a agreement where the vendor guarantees a specific service and states the penalties. • The operations group is responsible for collecting and measuring the performance parameters like transaction time, circuit error, transaction mixes, and overall service levels. • Management reporting means that the operations group takes their measurements and reports to the customer/ management the activities and the success of the telecommunication capabilities Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Performance Management • Configuration management continuously displays the present state of the network; a baseline of reports will show the present operation status of this network. • A primary reason for configuration management is to plan for normal growth and expansion, and to provide contingency resources needed during unplanned events. • Expansion and growth can be forecasted based on present use, trend and known plans. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Problem Management • Problem management is the process of quickly handling a problem from its initial recognition to its satisfactory resolution. • Documentation is an important step in problem management. All the problems, solutions, time to fix the problems and the person responsible for fixing the problems are documented for future use. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Security Management • Security management is the set of functions that protect telecommunication networks and systems from unauthorized access; creating and controlling the security policies. • The goal of security management is to control access to network resources according to set of policies and procedures. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Monitoring Employees • Monitoring employees within an organization is a very important security measure. • Focus is on monitoring unauthorized usage of organizational recourses like computers and bandwidth. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Change Management • When the environment is highly dynamic and users are requesting changes rapidly, lack of coordination of changes can lead to disaster. • Change management provides monitoring to the installed network in a planned, coordinated way. • Change management includes a process for approving requests and documenting them to always know the installed environment. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Capacity Management & Planning • Network administrators and managers must document the resources currently being used and the growth capability. • Capacity planning is a continuous process that involves forecasting nodes, circuits, channels, and bandwidth to accommodate the present need and the future requirements. • In order to do capacity planning, the network manager should have knowledge of operational, management and strategic plan of the organization. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Capacity Management & Planning • The institute for Computer Capacity Management has provided three elements for capacity planning: • Workload Characteristics: • Collect data regularly and identify the trend • Create a baseline of the current workload for forecasting • Forecasting: • Determine the desire end result capability and the applications that are planned within an organization • Performance Prediction: • Build a model, test the work load at peak periods and perform capacity planning annually Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Disaster Planning • Any organization is prone to a disaster like earthquake, floods and hurricanes. • A disaster plan requires procedures that occur everyday to allow recovery after a disaster and permit the organization to continue operations. • Disaster plan provides the place, procedures, and equipment to make use of those data for continued operation. • Disaster plan is also referred as business continuity plan. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Disaster Planning • On of the methods to mitigate the risk is the use redundant network resources. • A communication network must have many servers, routers and path. If one breaks down, other can be used. • Data backup can also be used to mitigate the risk of loosing critical data. Data should be backed up on multiple devices and preferably in different locations. Prepared by Saher H. Mohammed

Monitoring & Control of Network Activity