Management by proxy. (proxies in network management products) (Special Report: Network Roundup) (Tutorial)

As networks become more and more complex, network management software application have appeared to help users monitor and control the various components of their networks. While these tools are invaluable, a standard management package alone does not provide a complete solution, particularly for the distributed systems that are becoming prevalent. In most networks, there are many components-devices, operating systems, software applications-that are incapable of interacting with standard network management products and thus cannot be managed' by them. Network management thus becomes less effective, and less efficient, because numerous methodologies must be used for managing the various elements of the network. One solution to this problem that is now available for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-managed networks is the use of proxies. Simply put, a proxy is a software program that allows previously unmanageable network elements to be managed by a standard network management system. This article takes a look at how proxies fit into the network management picture and some new technology in this area for the AViiON.

Network management functions. To understand the function of proxies, it's necessary to be familiar with the basic elements of network management. There are three general categories of functions that network management products need to address:

Platform services. These are basic capabilities, visible primarily to developers, that implement protocols, provide access to key operational data and implement application programming interfaces (APIs). These services, such as addressing and translation, permit communication between the management application and the managed element. For example, platform services for machine-neutral encoding can distinguish between a binary representation of CPU data from an AViiON and a representation of the same type of data from a 486based PC and translate accordingly. Knowing' that the data came from an AViiON, the platform services would read those bits using the AViiON method of encoding and translate them into a format that could be understood by the management application.

The platform is critical because it determines the basic architectural characteristics of a product: scalability, extensibility, flexibility and openness. Increasing emphasis is being placed on the implementation and deployment of platforms that can address a wide variety of network objects.

* Applications. For users, the major benefits of network management are the collection, consolidation and presentation of raw data in useful formats. These functions are performed by application software designed to make use of platform services to obtain this data. …