Concept and types of Network Management

Concepts of Network Management

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines the concepts of network management for managing networks. The ISO develops this concept for both standard and primary means for understanding the major functions of network management and they are: 

• Fault Management
• Performance Management
• Configuration Management 
• Security Management
• Accounting Management 

Fault Management: This component of network management is associated with detecting, isolating, informing, and resolving network problems and faults. Likewise, the fault is the failure in the network components which results in loss of connectivity. Improved or well-implemented network fault management keeps connectivity, services, and applications at an optimum level which maintains fault tolerance and decreases downtime. Fault management issues can be alarm correlation, trouble ticketing systems, and expert system application. 

Performance management: This component of network management deals with the efficiency of the network both in present and in the future. Measuring, reporting, analyzing, and controlling traffic or performance data, the network health can be monitored constantly. Similarly, network performance indicators are used to make proactive decisions to make sure that the agreed Service Level Agreement (SLA) is met. And performance indicators are a kind of benchmark through which optimal network performance is determined. There are two types of it: Service-oriented indicators include availability, response time, and accuracy of the network whereas Efficiencyoriented indicators include throughput and utilization of the network. Overall, the main objective behind performance management is to maintain the level of network service and resolve performance issues like what level of capacity is utilized, any excessive traffic on a network, throughput level, checking response time and latency, uptime, and downtime, CRC error, and collisions. 

Configuration management: configuration management is associated with initializing a network and gracefully shutting down part or all of the network. It also involves maintaining, updating, and adding the relationship among components and the status of components themselves during network operations. Basically, start and shutdown operations are carried out. Therefore, the main objective is to determine the network configuration like how we set it up to behave in a network. And configuration management includes inventory management, network topology service, Service-Level Agreement (SLA), designing, implementing, and processing trouble tickets, order processing and provisioning, change management, and directory services. Therefore, this management tracks and control which devices are on or off. 

Security management: security is a big concern in the digital world. Numbers of threats and malicious activities are performed in order to compromise the securities barriers configured on a network. And security management provides facilities for the protection of network resources and user credentials and information. Technically, security management enforces policy for access control, authentication, and authorization. Network security facilities should be available for authorized parties only. It involves distributing, generating, and storing encryption keys. Access control or authorization and passwords information must be maintained and distributed. Maintaining logs of activities is an important security tool here. Similarly, security is achieved by risk analysis, protecting the Managed Objects, authentication procedures, maintenance of access control routines, management of key for encipherment, maintenance of authorization facilities, maintenance of security logs, and protecting the Network Management System. 

Accounting management: basically, accounting management deals with facilities to allow charging and costs to be assessed for use of network services. And these are internal accounting procedures rather than actual cash transfers, but they are important to the participating users nevertheless. This management is responsible for billing and for developing lifetime histories of the network components. Here, we just monitor resources usage for records and billing. Accounting management covers the areas like identification of cost components, establishing change-back policies, the definition of charge-back procedures, processing vendor bills, and integration of network accounting into corporate accounting policy.