Reusable Architecture for Data-Centric Network Management Systems

This paper describes a reusable architecture that has been used to develop network management systems for data-centric satellite-based networks. The satellite-transport characteristics and networks impose unique constraints on the management systems. Under the data-centric scheme, the manager keeps the network configuration management information that is automatically downloaded by the agents residing on the managed devices. An exclusive use of standards-based off-the-shelf network management platforms does not directly address all requirements for data-centric management of large satellite networks. The architecture described here is based on an integration scheme, called DBMS-based auto discovery. This scheme keeps relational DBMS and NM platforms in synchronization. The integration scheme preserves the desirable development and operational features of both the NM platform and the DBMS and leads to significant savings in development effort and time.