A Review of OSI Management Standards

Abstract The provision of management facilities within large networks based on the use of OSI protocols is essential in order to ensure the long-term success of OSI as a vehicle for global communication. These facilities must cope with a wide range of network technologies (both hardware and software) and provide tools that will be capable of use in a wide range of management applications. Perhaps the most difficult problem in the long term will be the provision of mechanisms which will allow interaction and cooperation between independent management domains in a network. At the present time, considerable progress is being made in a number of international standards committees with the definition of protocols and mechanisms that will provide the “toolbox” necessary for management applications to be written for the management of OSI. The main players at the present time are ISO/IEC JTC1/SC21 WG4, which is concerned with the development of protocols for OSI management, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6 WGs 2 and 4, which are developing management standards for the Network and Transport layers, and IEEE 802, which is developing standards for LAN management.