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NMS stands for Network Management System. NMS provides five capabilities namely Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security generally termed in the networking world as FCAPS functionality. In simple words, network management systems helps the network administrator to manage the network. As per the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) standards, NMS sits in the network management level, viz. third level. There are five levels as per the ITU TMN standards which are, Network element level, Element Management level, Network management level, Service Management Level and Business management level. Lets discuss about each of these levels in brief before we get in to details about Network Management Systems.
NETWORK ELEMENT LEVEL:
This is the level where the network element (devices to be managed) resides. These are the elements which are to be monitored for health and performance by the management systems residing in the higher level. Many of the devices maintain a database of information which is shared with above systems either by polling or transferring. Based on the data provided by the device, statistics and health of the device is identified.
In network terms, database that resides in the device is called the MIB (Management Information Base). The structure of the MIB depends on the protocol used for monitoring. MIBS contain data in an hierarchical manner and maintain the states of various components and flow of traffic.
ELEMENT MANAGEMENT LEVEL:
This is the level where Element Management Systems resides. EMS helps to manage the device namely the Network element. Element management systems are mostly vendor specific. They help in managing a single type of device. They monitor the devices as separate elements and monitor different components of the device separately. They provide the data to the network management systems at the high level. If a network consists of multi vendor devices then many EMS would be running at the EML and providing the data higher up to a single NMS. Element management systems gets the data by polling the device i.e only the information is available in the device and intelligence of getting the data resides in the EMS. Another variant of EMS is where the data is provided by the device itself periodically, in this case the intelligence of providing the data to EMS is in-built in the device. Element Management Systems have the data about the devices. They also provide FCP capability FCAPS but for a device and not for a network as a whole.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT LEVEL:
This is the level where Network Management Systems reside. Generally, there is only one Network management systems which gets the data from many Element Management Systems of multi-vendors. They gather the device specific data, manipulate and provide a data for the network. Network management systems provides data for networks than for each device in the network. They provides the FCAPS functionality for the network as a whole. They provide complete topology of the network, i.e, the way they are connected and communicate in the network. They provide real time trends about the network to the users. There many popular network management systems available in the market like HP OpenView?, Tivoli Netview, IpSwitch?'s WhatsUpGold?, Ciscoworks LMS etc.
SERVICE MANAGEMENT LEVEL:
This level holds all the applications which provides class/ Quality of Service to the user. The type of service that needs to be provided for the users is determined here with help of the availability of the data from NMS.
Discussion about NMS
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