Generic SNMP proxy agent framework for management of heterogeneous network elements

Centralized management and monitoring of Network Elements (NEs) in a communication network is very critical to ensure high availability and lower downtime. Many management protocols like SNMP, CMIP, TL1, CORBA etc. have been standardized by different bodies to facilitate unified management of different types of NEs. However, many NEs do not support these standard management protocols for different reasons and instead provide proprietary management mechanisms. To facilitate management of these NEs, a proxy/mediation function is required. In this paper, we present a Generic Proxy Agent framework for management of heterogeneous Network Elements. This framework consists of two components, namely an SNMP Proxy Agent and Mediation device. The SNMP proxy agent uses SNMPv3 which provides a comprehensive security framework which guarantees that the solution is not vulnerable to most of the security violations. The framework uses SNMPv3 context names to differentiate the Network Elements from which information is required. The proposed framework makes use of a standard open source Net-SNMP package with an unique idea of mediation device which bridges Net-SNMP agent and different types of Network Elements. The mediation device is a separate software module which actually communicates to Network Elements by converting SNMP requests into proprietary protocol messages and vice versa. The proposed generic framework is implemented using Java, hence provides platform independence. The proposed framework has been validated in the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) communication network where large number of Network Elements are heterogeneous in nature.