Network Management Systems

Network Management can be described as the process which is associated with the administration and management of the computer networks. The services which are generally provided by this discipline generally includes the analysis of the faults, management of the performance, network provisioning and lastly the maintenance of the service quality (Van Meerkerk, Edelenbos and Klijn 2015). The software which is generally used by the network administrators so as to perform the various functions is known as the Network Management Software.

The literature review has been conducted by collecting numerous international journals from different sources like the fields of supply chain management. Special attention has been put upon the journals which are associated with dealing with the strategic and business management issues. Additionally, searching according to the headwords from different article database is going the help the researchers moving towards an entirely new research field. These research topics are generally associated with dealing with various type of industries like the healthcare industry or might be associated with approaching towards the behavioral science or computer science.

The Network Management System or the NMS is considered to be one application or a set of application which is associated with allowing the network managers to manage the various independent components of the network present inside a bigger network management framework (Soeanu et al. 2018). NMS is generally used for monitoring the software as well as the hardware components present in a network.  

This literature review is going to discuss about a particular network management framework which would be consisting of three major dimensions. This dimensions mainly includes the network related strategies, organizations and the principles of working. The network vision as well as the targets acts as the incentive for building up of the network strategies. Below is the figure of the network management framework.

Fig 1: Network Framework

Source: (Alnaser and Ochoa 2015)

The figure that has been provided above is associated with describing the dynamic approach for managing the network in a dynamic way. Each company present in the network has to commit resources outside its organization boundaries. However, each company would be having its own resource base with which it would be operating (Ndiaye, Hancke and Abu-Mahfouz 2017). The main objective of the network includes the rationalization of a part of the network to which it is related, for the purpose of providing added value. The cost related to the resourcing of the new network must be justified by the value that is added.

Network Management

The strategy must be associated with providing guidelines and directions for managing the network and this includes the issues faced by the organization and the principles of working. Besides this there must exists a strategic plan which is mutually agreed so as to operate in different levels along with the different players in the network (Ding 2016). The strategy is also associated with marshaling so as to combine the differentiated competencies into a whole cohesive one.

Literature review on Network Management and security of Network:

Businesses are associated with reaching out and are responsible for touching its partners, customers and potential clients which is often dine by making use of the internet. According survey conducted by the Internet Software Consortiums Inter-Net Domain there exists almost more than 72 million hosts in the internet. Here the organizations are not associated with advertising their internal name spaces and besides this it is also known that most of the computers are connected to the internet in some fashion. There exist various potential avenues of attack between the vastness that exists between this spaces and the services that are available (Aarikka-Stenroos and Ritala 2017). For this reason, there it is not necessary that the attackers need to be smart, skilled or patient so as to develop an attack. Due to the presence of the user friendly software and the existence of the ubiquity in the methods for simple file distribution it is possible for anyone having a computer to become a potential attacker with no special skills required.

Attacks to the network have been discovered to be of different variant in accordance to the system, that the attacker attempts to penetrate. Attacks to be network can be considered to be intentional or unintentional and the technically competent intruders are generally seen to be interested in targeting the protocols which are used for the purpose of securing the communication existing between the networking devices (Modieginyane et al. 2018). This helps in understanding the fact that how highly the sophisticated intruders are associated with penetrating the internet networks despite of the existence of he the various high level security features. However, with increase in the number of intruders the experts of the networks are associated with the derivation of new techniques that are required in order to prevent the attackers from accessing the networks.

Servers and the network availability are considered to be an vital aspect for maintaining the productivity ad continuity of the business. The IT administrators are associated with facing a lot of challenges and are having a lot of responsibilities so as to maintain the network and keep minimum downtime of the network (Newell, Sandström and Söderholm 2017). The size of the organizations8dd are considered while keeping a track of various components like the management of devices, updates, patching, requirements of the compliance, configuration of the new applications and the issues which rises due to errors of the human or due to the environmental factors. Some of the management challenges which are face by the IT administrators have been discussed in the later section of the literature review.

Literature review on Network Management and security of Network

According to Nordin et al. (2018), the IT administrators are generally serves as the backbone of the modern Information technology systems that are seen to be dependent upon the network infrastructures which are complex in nature. There exist various organizations, medium to large which makes use of large number of devices which are considered to be mission critical for the organization’s operations. These devices might be including the different type of hardware from various vendors, components related to security, routers, switches, and other components which are responsible for creating the infrastructure. Few of the challenges faced while managing the networks manually have been provided below:

1. Tasks related to configuration: The usage of the conventional approach for administrating the network is responsible for making the IT personnel invest a lot of time upon the performing configurations which are seen to be repetitive and time consuming (Aarikka-Stenroos and Ritala 2017). This is initially responsible for taking the time away from the planning related to future innovations which would be responsible for increasing the productivity.
2. Growth of the Network: With the growth of the organization the number of devices and applications is also increasing. This in turn is responsible for giving rise to additional tasks related to configuration. For this reason, the IT administrators are associated with prioritization of the tasks in accordance to their importance for the business which in turn is responsible for an increase in the risk of errors and network outages.
3. Security of the network: The tasks related to the networks security is generally considered to be monumental related to the patching, firewalls, monitoring of the intrusions and any other security measures that are used for securing the data in the network (Modieginyane et al. 2018). This in turn is responsible for leaving a room for the errors which are responsible for increasing the risk of data breaches.
4. Lack of centralized management: Whenever the conventional approach is used for management of the network it is seen that there is no centralized form of control upon the process of keeping a track of the changes taking place in the configuration and any other steps which are critical for the mission and generally required for meeting the regulations related to compliance. So, performing each of the management related tasks is seen to be time consuming and repetitive.
5. Lack of Accountability: In most of the infrastructure it is seen there does not exist any such way which are responsible for ensuring the accountability of the device configurations and the actions of the users. In case if any security breach occurs or there is any kind of changes in the configuration which is unauthorized then there is no typical way of tracing the actions back to a specific user.

There also exists a hybrid security protocol which helps in providing a better security by making use of the combination of symmetric and asymmetric algorithm. The MD5 algorithm is used for the purpose of calculating the hash values in the AES algorithm. The hash values are generally encrypted by making use of the dual RSA and the encrypted messages of this hash values are generally sent to the destination (Zhu et al. 2016). In the receiving end calculation of the hash value of the decrypted plaintext is done by making use of the MD5 which is later compared with the hash values of the original plain text and s then calculated at the sending end so as to look for the integrity. This helps in understanding the fact that if any kind of alteration has taken place in the original text or not.

A survey was presented by Thyagaturu, Dashti and Reisslein (2016), regarding the various wireless security protocols. The various constituents of this protocol included the WEP protocol types, types of WPA protocol, improvements in the WPA. The major problems that are faced by the WPA were also explained which took place on the PSK part of the algorithm. There are various type of issues and challenges that are faced by the wireless sensor networks. There are mainly two major attacks against this networks which includes the attacks against the basic mechanism for example the routing mechanism and the attack against the security mechanisms. Some of the other major attacks includes the DoS or the denial of sevice attack, attacks on the information that is being transmitted, Sybil attack, hello flood attack, black hole or sinkhole attack and many more. There exists various type of security schemes which are used by the wireless sensor networks and this includes the wormhole based, random key, tinysec and statistical en-route filtering.

According to Carvalho et al. (2016), there also exists a secret free security infrastructure that is used by the wireless networks and this is generally based upon two of the physical primitives which includes the cooperative congestion and spatial signal enforcement. The corporative congestion is generally used for the purpose of conducting the wireless communication which are confidential, whereas the spatial signal enforcement is used for the authenticity of the messages. This is the infrastructure that is associated with providing confidentiality, identity, authenticity, authentication of the messages, integrity, non-repudiation of the sender and receiver and anonymity.

Another paper by Ramirez-Perez and Ramos (2016), was associated with explaining the various motivations, vulnerabilities and opportunities that the hackers are having. It was also explained in this paper that the wireless sensors networks are generally exposed to various kind of security threat which are likely to endanger the applications success. the literature review conducted in this paper helped in understanding the fact that the security is associated with providing support to the wireless networks might face various type of challenges and the major reasons lying behind this includes the existence of limited energy, the bandwidth of communication and the computational power (Soeanu et al. 2018). The various type of security issues and the solutions to different type of attacks generally includes the Denial of service attacks, attacks upon the routing, injecting of the false packets, real-time attacks upon the requirements, usage of topological information so as to attack the networks and many more

Due to existence of various highly available solution providers and automated tools, the management of the network gets very much simplified. This in turn is responsible for providing the IT administrators with a lot of time to focus upon the various new innovations of the organization rather than performing tasks which are seen to be repetitive and time consuming. According to Alkaabi et al. (2017), usage of the automated tools is responsible for providing a way which can be used for tracking the configurations or for reducing the possibilities of errors by humans, improving the compliance of the policies and reduce the costs of various operations. In addition to this the usage of virtualized solution is also possible which helps in overseeing and management of the network either onsite or from a remote location. Most of the virtualized solution providers are associated with providing offers related to configuration, change and compliance management services. These solutions are also equipped with various kind of necessary automation tools which are responsible for reducing the errors and performing audits and reports related to the status of the network configurations.

Every organization expects that a network is reliable, secure, expandable and flexible along with being cost-effective and for that reason a number of balancing activities needs to be performed by the IT teams. Security of the network are being adopted at an increased rate and for that reason new ways are being developed which are to be utilized by the users and the back-end system work. Both sides of the enterprise network are seeing an increase in the mobility as well as in the variety. The outer range consists of user who are responsible for operating a wider range of hand-held devices whereas at the inner edge the cluster of simple static servers are being replaced by the different virtualized servers, mechanisms for data backup and new storage devices (Ahuja 2017). Along with these needs of the user as well as the business are being added to the list of features which the network must support.

The flexibility that the end-point devices are having brings a lot of security risks. The contemporary operating systems and the data traffic are associated with allowing the different possible forms of virus and cyber-attacks. Further security flaws are introduced as the new software are being rushed into the production due to the highly competitive mobile device market.

According to Hashemi and Abdelghany (2018), with the growth of complexity in the network the size of eth networks is also increasing. With more and more convergence of the different functions into eth data networks, the number of devices which are connected to the network is also growing and this is initially responsible increase in the number of switching ad routing nodes.  More and more operations of the organization need to be attached to the data network like the need of connecting of the remote locations with the central site or need of the location which is not having any staff regarding the link for surveillance cameras or monitoring of the environment or controlling of the automated devices. With growth more, chances of failure occur which requires a lot of time to resolve and this is particularly very much problematic for the remote sites which is having a number of staffs that are affected and is not having IT specialist in the site. Maintenance of a reliable operation of the globally distributed network is also seen to be facing a lot of problems in supporting multiple number of important functions.

The problems or the Challenges that has been discussed above can be tackled by making use of the Allied Telesis AMF. Allied Telesis AMF is considered to eb set of management function which are encoded within the software of the network nodes by themselves. The tasks which are common is seen to be automated or is made in such a simple way that running the business on a every day basis can be achieved by decreasing the overheads at a considerable manner. Besides this framework is also associated with enabling the capability of managing the network as a single unit and this is done by the creation of cooperative management plane which is also responsible for unification of the operations that the individual network switches are having. AMF is responsible for the enabling of the Plug and play networking and zero-touch management (Nobre et al. 2018). AMF also provides management which is centralized, backups in an automated way, updates in an automated way, provisioning in an automated way and lastly auto recovery.

• The top challenges are solved by the AMF in the following way:
• The change management is configured in an efficient way
• Failed units of the network are recovered automatically
• New units are provisioned automatically
• Upgrade of the software in an automated way

Conclusion:

The literature review provided above helped in concluding to the fact that the arrival of various frameworks along with PCs, workstations, LANs and servers have been responsible bringing a great change to the shape of the network forever. Running network management applications in a highly available fashion is required in many of the environments. For this reason, the key network functions are to be identified along with the capabilities of the application which would be responsible for driving the considerations which are highly available. Security of the network is considered to be very important field which needs more and more attention. It is very essential to analyze the various security threats and the internet protocols for the purpose of determining the security technologies that are needed for securing the networks. There are various ways of securing a network which can be done such as the enforcement of the company network usage policies which would be responsible for preventing the internal users from pulling in threats that might arise due to misuse.

References:

Aarikka-Stenroos, L. and Ritala, P., 2017. Network management in the era of ecosystems: Systematic review and management framework. Industrial Marketing Management, 67, pp.23-36.

Ahuja, R.K., 2017. Network flows: theory, algorithms, and applications. Pearson Education.

Alkaabi, S.S., Zeineldin, H.H., Khadkikar, V. and Elmoursi, M.S., 2017, April. Dynamic analysis of OLTC and voltage regulator under active network management considering different load profiles. In 2017 IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Alnaser, S.W. and Ochoa, L.F., 2015. Advanced network management systems: A risk-based AC OPF approach. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 30(1), pp.409-418.

Carvalho, L.F., Barbon Jr, S., de Souza Mendes, L. and Proenca Jr, M.L., 2016. Unsupervised learning clustering and self-organized agents applied to help network management. Expert Systems with Applications, 54, pp.29-47.

Ding, J., 2016. Advances in network management. Auerbach Publications.

Hashemi, H. and Abdelghany, K., 2018. End?to?End Deep Learning Methodology for Real?Time Traffic Network Management. Computer?Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 33(10), pp.849-863.

Klijn, E.H., Ysa, T., Sierra, V., Berman, E., Edelenbos, J. and Chen, D.Y., 2015. The influence of network management and complexity on network performance in Taiwan, Spain and The Netherlands. Public Management Review, 17(5), pp.736-764.

Modieginyane, K.M., Letswamotse, B.B., Malekian, R. and Abu-Mahfouz, A.M., 2018. Software defined wireless sensor networks application opportunities for efficient network management: A survey. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 66, pp.274-287.

Modieginyane, K.M., Letswamotse, B.B., Malekian, R. and Abu-Mahfouz, A.M., 2018. Software defined wireless sensor networks application opportunities for efficient network management: A survey. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 66, pp.274-287.

Ndiaye, M., Hancke, G. and Abu-Mahfouz, A., 2017. Software defined networking for improved wireless sensor network management: A survey. Sensors, 17(5), p.1031.

Newell, D., Sandström, A. and Söderholm, P., 2017. Network management and renewable energy development: an analytical framework with empirical illustrations. Energy research & social science, 23, pp.199-210.

Nobre, J.C., Melchiors, C., Marquezan, C.C., Tarouco, L.M.R. and Granville, L.Z., 2018. A survey on the use of P2P technology for network management. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 26(1), pp.189-221.

Nordin, F., Ravald, A., Möller, K. and Mohr, J.J., 2018. Network management in emergent high-tech business contexts: Critical capabilities and activities. Industrial Marketing Management, 74, pp.89-101.

Ramirez-Perez, C. and Ramos, V., 2016. SDN meets SDR in self-organizing networks: fitting the pieces of network management. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(1), pp.48-57.

Soeanu, A., Ray, S., Berger, J. and Debbabi, M., 2018. Efficient Sensor Network Management for Asset Localization. Computers & Operations Research.

Thyagaturu, A.S., Dashti, Y. and Reisslein, M., 2016. SDN-based smart gateways (Sm-GWs) for multi-operator small cell network management. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 13(4), pp.740-753.

Van Meerkerk, I., Edelenbos, J. and Klijn, E.H., 2015. Connective management and governance network performance: the mediating role of throughput legitimacy. Findings from survey research on complex water projects in the Netherlands. Environment and Planning C: government and Policy, 33(4), pp.746-764.

Zhu, H., Liao, X., de Laat, C. and Grosso, P., 2016. Joint flow routing-scheduling for energy efficient software defined data center networks: A prototype of energy-aware network management platform. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 63, pp.110-124.