Week 1 Paper

Week 1 Paper: Network Management System

Russell Burd

NETW420: Enterprise Network Management

January 11, 2015

Professor Risley

Networks are composed of various components that include but are not limited to routers, switches, and end user devices such as servers, PC’s, and peripherals. All of these devices need to be monitored to make sure that they are operating properly. That is why Network Management Systems are used. As explained by Hale, B. (2013, January 1), a Network Management System (NMS) is the use of hardware and or software tools by IT professionals, which allow them to supervise each component that is within their network using a network management framework. These NMS monitor bandwidth, packet loss, latency, information about router and switches, and other Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) enable devices. The NMS can also send notifications to the network administrator when preconfigured alarms go off. There are many different types and vendors of these NMS out on the market. Each one has different features and supports different Operating Systems (OS) along with what device manufactures they will support. Some NMS operate only at the command line interface (CLI), while others operate using a web browser and some operate using a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Each NMS shows graphical displays so that the information that is retained can be easily interpreted for troubleshooting of network problems.

SolarWinds is a full featured NMS that is not open source and contains several appliances that vary in range of cost for each appliance and what the appliance does. These appliances are Network Performance Monitor v11, IP Control Bundle, Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack, Network Configuration Manager, IP Address Manager, User Device Tracker, NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, VoIP and Network Quality Manager, Engineer’s Tool Set, and Network Topology Mapper. The way it is explained by Network Management Software & Network Tools. (2015, January...