LAN and Network Mangements

Imagine yourself as a communicate administrator, accountable for a 2000 usager earnings. This network securees from California to New York, and some branches either military post seas. In this situation, anything can, and usually does go wrong, but it would be your job as a musical arrangement administrator to resolve the problem with it arises as speedily as possible. The last thing you would want is for your boss to call you up, intercommunicate why you suffernt d wholeness anything to fix the 2 major(ip) systems that pass water been down for several hours.How do you explain to him that you didnt pull down k immediately ab away it? Would you even want to tell him that? So now, video recording yourself in the same situation, wholly this time, you were using a network observe course. Sitting in front of a large screen displaying a map of the domain of a function, leaning back gently in your chair. A engaging warning tone sounds, and looking at your display, you see that California is now glowing a soft red in color, in place of the green glow just moments before. You select the state of California, and it zooms in for a closer look.You see a network diagram overview of all the computers your partnership has within California. Two systems ar flashing, with an X on top of them indicating that they argon experiencing problems. Tagging the two systems, you press enter, and with a flash, the screen displays all the statitics of the two systems, including anything they fountain have in common causing the problem. Seeing that both systems atomic number 18 linked to the same card of a network switch, you pick up the phone and curb that branch office a call, nonifying them not completely that they have a problem, but how to fix it as thoroughly.Early in the daytimes of computers, a central computer (called a mainframe) was associateed to a bunch of dumb terminals using a standard copper wire. non much thought was put into how this was done beca delectation there was scarcely one focal point to do it they ere either connected, or they werent. Figure 1 shows a diagram of these early systems. If something went wrong with this type of system, it was fairly easy to troubleshoot, the tap almost always fell on the mainframe system.Shortly subsequently the introduction of Personal Computers (PC), came Local bowl Networks (LANS), forever changing the way in which we look at networked systems. LANS skipperly consisted of just PCs connected into groups of computers, but soon after, there came a need to connect those individual LANS unitedly melodic lineing what is known as a Wide Area Network, or WAN, the conclusion was a multifactorial connection of omputers joined together using various types of interfaces and communications protocols. Figure 2 shows a modern day WAN.Last year, a survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that 15% of their keep down computer budget, 1. 6 Million dollars, was spent on network way (Ros e, 115). Because of this, much attention has foc employ on two families of network heed protocols The unreserved Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which comes from a de facto standards based priming coat of TCP/IP communication, and the Common Management learning Protocol (CMIP), which derives from a de jure standards-based background associated with the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) (Fisher, 183).In this report I pull up stakes cover advantages and disadvantages of both Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). , as well as establish a newfound protocol for the future. I will too give some good reasons supporting why I see that SNMP is a protocol that all network SNMP is a protocol that enables a attention station to configure, monitor, and receive trap (alarm) messages from network turn of coress. (Feit, 12). It is formally specified in a series of related Request for Comment (RFC) documents, listed here.The fir st protocol developed was the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). It was commonly considered to be a fastly targeted band-aid solution to internetwork cargon difficulties while separate, large and better protocols were being designed. (Miller, 46). still, no better choice became available, and SNMP soon became the network management protocol of choice. It works rattling simply (as the name suggests) it exchanges network packets through messages (known as protocol data units (PDU)). The PDU contains variables that have both titles and values. there be five types of PDUs which SNMP uses to onitor a network two vie with reading terminal data, two with setting terminal data, and one called the trap, utilise for monitoring network events, such as terminal start-ups By removed the largest advantage of SNMP over CMIP is that its design is simple, so it is as easy to use on a small network as well as on a large one, with ease of setup, and lack of stress on system resource s. Also, the simple design makes it simple for the exploiter to program system variables that they would like to monitor.Another major advantage to SNMP is that is in wide use today around the world. Because of its evelopment during a time when no other protocol of this type existed, it became very popular, and is a built in protocol supported by most major vendors of networking hardware, such as hubs, bridges, and routers, as well as majoring operating systems. It has even been put to use at bottom the Coca-Cola machines at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California (Borsook, 48). Because of SNMPs smaller size, it has even been implement in such devices as caro drug users, compact disc players, and battery-operated barking dogs.In the 1990 Interop show, privy Romkey, vice president of engineering or Epilogue, demonstrated that through an SNMP program running on a PC, you could control a standard toaster through a network (Miller, 57). SNMP is by no means a perfect network m anager. But because of its simple design, these flaws can be fixed. The first problem realized by most companies is that there are some rather large warrantor problems related with SNMP. Any prissy hacker can easily get at SNMP cultivation, giving them any information about the network, and also the ability to potentially shut down systems on the network.The latest version of SNMP, called SNMPv2, has added some security measures that were left out of SNMP, to armed combat the 3 largest problems plaguing SNMP Privacy of Data (to prevent intruders from gaining access to information carried on the network), au and sotication (to prevent intruders from sending false data across the network), and access control (which restricts access of particular variables to certain users, thus removing the possibility of a user accidentally crashing the network). (Stallings, 213) The largest problem with SNMP, ironically enough, is the same thing that make it great its simple design.Because it is so simple, the information it deals with is either detailed, nor well organized enough to deal with the growing networks of the This is mainly due to the quick creation of SNMP, because it was never designed to be the network management protocol of the 1990s. Like the previous flaw, this one too has been corrected with the new version, SNMPv2. This new version allows for more in-detail specification of variables, including the use of the table data social organization for easier data retrieval. Also added are two new PDUs that are used to manipulate the tabled objects.In fact, so many new features have been added that the formal pecifications for SNMP have expanded from 36 pages (with v1) to 416 pages with SNMPv2. (Stallings, 153) Some people force say that SNMPv2 has lost the simplicity, but the truth is that the changes were necessary, and could not have been avoided. A management station relies on the agent at a device to retrieve or update the information at the device. The information is viewed as a logical database, called a Management Information Base, or MIB. MIB modules set forth MIB variables for a large variety of device types, computer hardware, and software components.The original MIB for Managing a TCP/IP internet (now called MIB-I) was defined in RFC 066 in August of 1988. It was updated in RFC 1156 in May of 1990. The MIB-II version published in RFC 1213 in May of 1991, contained some improvements, and has proved that it can do a good job of meeting basic TCP/IP management needs. MIB-II added many useful variables missing from MIB-I (Feit, 85). MIB files are common variables used not only by SNMP, but CMIP as well. In the late 1980s a project began, funded by governments, and large corporations.Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) was born. Many thought that because of its nearly infinite training budget, that it would quickly suffer in idespread use, and overthrow SNMP from its throne. Unfortunately, problems with its implemen tation have delayed its use, and it is now only available in limited form from developers themselves. (SNMP, Part 2 of 2, III. 40. ) CMIP was designed to be better than SNMP in every way by repairing all flaws, and expanding on what was good about it, make it a bigger and more detailed network manager.Its design is similar to SNMP, where PDUs are used as variables to monitor the network. CMIP moreover contains 11 types of PDUs (compared to SNMPs 5). In CMIP, the variables are seen as very complex and sophisticated data tructures with three attributes. These include 1) Variable attributes which appoint the variables characteristics (its data 2) variable behaviors what actions of that variable can be triggered. 3) Notifications the variable generates an event report whenever a specified event occurs (eg.A terminal ending would cause a variable notification As a comparison, SNMP only employs variable properties from one and three preceding(prenominal). The biggest feature of the C MIP protocol is that its variables not only relay information to and from the terminal (as in SNMP) , but they can also be used to perform tasks that would be impossible under SNMP. For instance, if a terminal on a network cannot reach the fileserver a pre-determined union of times, then CMIP can notify appropriate personnel of the event.With SNMP however, a user would have to specifically tell it to keep track of unsuccessful attempts to reach the server, and then what to do when that variable reaches a limit. CMIP therefore results in a more efficient management system, and less work is required from the user to keep updated on the status of the network. CMIP also contains the security measures left out by SNMP. Because of the large development budget, when it becomes available, CMIP ill be widely used by the government, and the corporations that funded it.After reading the above paragraph, you might wonder why, if CMIP is this wonderful, is it not being used already? (after all, it had been in development for nearly 10 years) The answer is that possibly CMIPs only major disadvantage, is enough in my opinion to render it useless. CMIP requires about ten times the system resources that are needed for SNMP. In other words, very some systems in the world would able to handle a full implementation on CMIP without undergoing colossal network modifications. This disadvantage has no inexpensive fix to it. For that reason, many believe CMIP is doomed to fail.The other flaw in CMIP is that it is very difficult to program. Its complex nature requires so many different variables that only a few skilled programmers are able to use it to its full potential. Considering the above information, one can see that both management systems have their advantages and disadvantages. However the deciding factor between the two, lies with their implementation, for now, it is almost impossible to find a system with the necessary resources to support the CMIP model, even though it i s superior to SNMP (v1 and v2) in both design and operation.Many people believe that the growing power of modern systems will soon fit well with CMIP model, and might result in its widespread use, but I believe by the time that day comes, SNMP could very well have adapted itself to become what CMIP currently offers, and more. As weve seen with other products, once a technology achieves vital mass, and a substantial installed base, its quite difficult to convince users to economic rent it out and start fresh with an new and unproven technology (Borsook, 48). It is then recommend that SNMP be used in a situation where minimial security is needed, and SNMPv2 be used Borsook, Paulina.