The OSI/Network Management Forum has separated infrastructure elements from functional capability in Release 1 of its network management standard, and says that functional enhancements, to be issued as dot releases – 1.1 and so forth – will be added as quickly as possible to increase the functional depth of Release 1. The basic infrastructure of Release 1, which includes the data communications protocols, will be held constant for a period of at least 30 months from the issue of the last dot release. Testing management will be the first dot release, followed by releases to define trouble ticketing, performance management, usage records, path tracing, and generic functions such as summary reporting. The next major Release, in the second half of 1992, will depend on progress in standards agreement. The Forum says that specifications will be aligned with standards when those standards are approved and stable; alignment should occur within two years of agreement of international standards; and the advance of standards work to draft international standard will prompt definition of a Forum migration plan, to ease the transition to final approved standards. The Forum will strive for backward compatibility between all releases. With British Telecommunications Plc as a founder member, the Forum now has 104 member firms in 16 countries.
