[Research-funding] Re: [nmrg] network management research funding text

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <j.schoenwaelder@iu-bremen.de>]

Attached is the revised text for section 3.5 of the IAB research funding 
draft which includes the changes made during the 13th NMRG meeting in
Vienna. 

This is the last call to submit your input. If I do not receive any
additional comments by August 10th, I consider this version to be in
concens with the NMRG views.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany
3.5.  Network Management

   The Internet had early success in network device monitoring with
   the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and its associated
   Management Information Base (MIB).  There has been comparatively
   less success in managing networks, in contrast to the monitoring of
   individual devices. Furthermore, there are a number of operator
   requirements not well supported by the current Internet management
   framework.  An enhanced network management architecture that more
   fully supports real operational network management needs is
   desirable.

   Unfortunately, network management research has historically been
   very underfunded. Operators have complained that existing solutions
   are inadequate. Research needs to be done to better understand how
   to address the issues. 

3.5.1.  Managing Networks, Not Devices

   At present, there are few or no good tools for managing a whole
   network instead of isolated devices. Current network management
   protocols such as SNMP are fine for reading status of well-defined
   objects from individual devices. But managing networks instead of
   isolated devices requires the ability to view the network as a large
   distributed system. Research is needed on scalable distributed data
   aggregation mechanisms, scalable distributed event correlation
   algorithms, and distributed and dependable control mechanisms.

   Applied research into methods of managing sets of networked devices
   seems worthwhile.  Ideally such a management approach would support
   distributed management, rather than being strictly centralized.

   The lack of appropriate network management tools has been cited as
   one of the major barriers to the deployment of IP multicast
   [Diot00, SP03]. This in particular impacts multimedia (voice and
   video) IP networks that rely on multicast services and research
   would be useful in this area.

3.5.2.  Autonomous Network Management

   Current approaches to network management do not scale sufficiently,
   so network operators often have difficulties operating their
   network(s) as successfully and economically as desired.  Hence,
   more work is needed to improve the automation achieved by network
   management systems and to localize management.  This might involve
   application of control theory, artificial intelligence, expert
   systems technology, or other mechanisms.

3.5.3.  Configuration Management

   Operators at the IAB Network Management Workshop [RFC-3535] held in
   2002 reported that scalable distributed configuration management
   for sets of network devices is a significant challenge today.  In
   particular, it is desirable to execute configuration transactions
   across a number of connected devices, which requires protocols that
   support distributed transactions.  Furthermore, configuration data
   should be represented in a way which simplifies the processing and
   generation of configurations with standard tools.

   Even individual improvements in configuration management for sets
   of networked devices are very welcome.  Such improvements need to
   include an integrated approach to security for the configuration
   data.

3.5.4.  Enhanced Monitoring Capabilities

   SNMP does not scale very well to monitoring large numbers of
   objects in many devices in different parts of the network.  Some
   implementations also show inaccuracies (especially when monitoring
   on shorter time scales) or they lack support for the objects that
   operators are interested in. An alternative approach worth
   exploring is how to provide scalable and distributed monitoring,
   not on individual devices, but instead on groups of devices and
   networks-as-a-whole. This requires adequate and scalable data
   aggregation techniques.

3.5.5. Customer Network Management

   An open issue related to network management is helping users and
   others to identify and resolve problems in the network.  If a user
   can't access a web page, it would be useful if the user could find
   out, easily, without having to run low-level diagnostic tools (ping
   and traceroute), whether the problem was that the web server was
   down, that the network was partitioned due to a link failure, that
   there was heavy congestion along the path, that the DNS name
   couldn't be resolved, that the firewall prohibited the access, or
   something else.

   Applied research is needed to understand how to translate data that
   exists in a network or a network management system into terms
   understandable by customers. This also requires to be able to
   determine which customers are affected and how the business is
   affected if something breaks. Of course, customer network
   management mechanisms must not reveal any confidential details.

3.5.6 Analysis of Current Management Protocol Usage

   In the past, much work has been spent on the specification and
   implementation of the current Internet network management
   architecture. However, operators reported that they use only a
   subset of this architecture.  A better understanding of what is
   used for which purpose (and what is not used) is highly desirable.

   One way to research this issue is by automated network management
   protocol traffic measurements and subsequent analysis in close
   cooperation with operators.