Network Management

Network Management

NTC 411

7/8/2013

Randy Shirley

Network Management

Networks, whether personal or business, need to be managed. If not, there could be breaches in the network. But what happens when it is down? How do you manage access to nodes that are still on your network? We would use what is known as In-Band and Out-of-Band network management. In-Band, Out-of-Band---what does it all mean? Well, basically In-Band is internally controlling your network on the local level, and Out-of-Band is using an outside source to manage and correct errors from the local network. In-band is where the management and the data paths all share the same resources. Out-of-band is where the two paths are totally isolated from each other (i.e. host base products), and then split-path, which today takes advantage of intelligent switches.

In-Band

In-Band management uses the same infrastructure networks that the devices themselves support. All networking equipment such as switches, routers, network devices and servers can be managed in-band using SNMP protocols. SNMP is a standard TCP/IP protocol for network management. Network administrators use SNMP to monitor and map network availability, performance, and error rates. Another In-Band management is QoS. QoS is Quality of Service. Quality of service is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to the flow of data. Servers can act as an In-Band network management service tool as well.

Out-of-Band

Out-of-Band refers to communication that does not follow the same path as the normal data. When used with data network management, the term means that there is a separate network used to monitor and control a data network. Access to a server outside the local network would be considered Out-of-Band network management system. You have the local network that can access the server, but you also have outside computers that need...