Impatiently waiting the brave new world of open systems network management? Well British Telecommunications Plc and Digital Equipment Corp’s announcement two weeks ago that their repective network management systems will be linked by the OSI management service CMIP Common Management Interface Protocol provides some clues as to the joys and horrors that we have to look forward to – and the work that a vendor needs to do before the standards are much use. What the two companies actually said was: first, that they were using Common Management Information Protocol and Common Management Information Services to share information; second, that they had adjusted their respective network management systems so that they can actually deal effectively with these foreign messages; and third, that the two companies would be synchronising the release of products to avoid what Keith Willetts, British Telecom’s general manager of network management systems, likened to the sound of one hand clapping. First fruits of the co-operation will be available in the third quarter next year, but visitors to next month’s Telecom ’91 in Geneva will see a working prototype.
Testing
Most of the remaining work is in testing, and beta sites have already been approached. At first glance there is nothing too momentous here – CMIP/CMIS is well understood and both companies claim that the implementation of the protocol was fairly simple. The hard part, and the part where both companies seem to have stolen a march on their competitors is in developing software that can make practical use of the information that the protocols use. Consider DEC’s DECmcc network management tool: it was designed to control DECnet installations, not configure and report on international telecommunications links. Likewise, British Telecom’s Concert Integrated Management System doesn’t have the foggiest idea about applications running on a DEC VAX. So while CMIP and CMIS are more than capable of passing information about both of these subjects, the companies have had their work cut out to turn management engines that were initially fairly specific, into ones that can manage the network end-to-end. With DECmcc we are using a model that is built around DECnet said Stan Smits, DEC’s telecommunications engineering group development manager. The protocol itself is the easy piece, he added: the most difficult part was to build additional modules into DECmcc that could handle information such as Packet-Switched Service and leased line error rates.
By Chris Rose
This sentiment was echoed Alan Rudge, managing director of Telecom’s development and procurement division who said that it was also one of the most difficult areas to handle in any other way than a collaborative basis. The message is clear – if you are a vendor wanting to build an all-singing, all-dancing network management system you are going to need help. British Telecom and DEC, on the other hand, know how to do it now – one alien environment under their belt gives us a quick start when talking to other manufacturers. But how well will DECmcc and Concert IMS sing and dance – at this point the sceptical might like to forget for the moment the fact that no commercial Concert products have been launched yet despite a lengthy gestation. The answer is that neither product will be able to do it all. To some, the dream of open systems network management has been the Total Management Station – a workstation at which the network manager would be able to sit in order to monitor and tweak all aspects of the network. The DEC-British Telecom scheme suggests that even in the medium to long term the dream will remain just that: those running a combined Concert-DECnet system will still need both management systems in order to get the best out of the network. Part of the reason is that neither company is intending to install CMIP/CMIS on all of its manageable network devices. While the CMIP/CMIS suite has won plaudits for its power and flexibility, it has a rapacious when it comes to memory requirements and processor power. So
the companies are going to continue to use proprietary protocols when managing many of their smaller pieces of kit such as modems. It makes sense, but it also means that users are effectively locked into the vendor’s management system. The only place where CMIP/CMIS is guaranteed is at the interface designed to connect the two management systems together – the Conformance Management Entity, CME. Even if the Open Systems Interconnection management protocols are eventually installed on everything from the Cray to the coffee machine, it is still unlikely that the Total Management Station will appear; the software required to control all of the fine nuances of all parts of a network would be a behemoth indeed. So we are stuck with multiple management stations, each one specialising in a different part of the network, but able to pass along information necessary to other management stations’. That is not too bad – but the really horrible thought is that if every vendor follows DEC and British Telecom’s example and eschews CMIP/CMIS in just a few of their devices, we may still be faced with a growing number of management stations that owe their existance to nothing more than proprietary management protocols. Which prompts the thought that the OSI Network Managment Forum has failed completely. Keith Willetts, the Forum’s chairman, denies the suggestion, but acknowledges that proliferating management stations are a real danger.
Problem overted
However he believes that the problem can be averted if instead of building physical network management stations, vendors would start building software modules to slot into other management systems such as Hewlett Packard Co’s OpenView or the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Management Environment, due to be specified this month. Willetts says Concert itself will become a Distributed Management Environment-based based application in time. Does that mean that Willetts, a man steeped in open systems, is suggesting vendors should leave proprietary protocols on their devices and just standardise their software management modules? If I was in that business, that is what I would be doing he declares.
