Disciplines for Effective Network Management

Internetworks are managed with distributed administration and ownership and frequently contain many different types of equipment. Consequently, network management has become more important and more difficult. Effective network management requires knowledge from many disciplines including Communications, Network Analysis, Databases, Distributed Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Factors. This paper describes our research into these areas in support of the Automated Network Management (ANM) system which will be used by network operators, network analysts, and administrative personnel. This system is currently in development at BBN Laboratories Incorporated under contract to DARPA and CECOM and draws upon earlier work at BBN.