Southborough, Massachusetts-based Chipcom Corp has unveiled its Enterprise Network Management Architecture, based around a five-layered hierarchy of monitoring, analysis and configuration capabilities. The first, or Domain Management/Management in the Hub layer includes Chipcom device-resident agents, providing the Management Information Base Remote Monitoring Single Network Management Protocol and domain manager interfaces to the company’s ONdemand Network Control System network management software and related applications, says Chipcom. According to the company, these agents also automatically collect system information for activities such as inventory, power management and accounting, as well as security applications. Chipcom will be incorporating Newton, Massachusetts-based Axon Networks Inc’s Resident Monitor agent within the architecture and will be including Epilogue Technology Corp’s SNMP v 2.0 in future hub Management Interface Bases, following its announcement of licensing agreements with the two last May. The Device Management layer is the core application for monitoring, controlling and configuring Chipcom devices, says the company. It is based on a distributed and hierarchical agent architecture and gives users a graphical interface for managing the device agents, as well as providing the interface to enterprise management applications.
New versions
As part of this layer, Chipcom says it will deliver new versions of its Ondemand NCS, Ondemand NCS v 3.0 for Unix and ONdemand NCS v 1.5 for Windows and will add full management capabilities for its ONcore switching system and the ONsemble family of stackable hubs. The Advanced Network Analysis layer, as its name suggests, is a RMON-based layer providing network analysis, fault isolation and problem determination for Chipcom-based networks and networks using RMON-compliant probes. The layer also includes network analysis, says Chipcom. The Logical Network Management layer presents views of the network from which administrators can reportedly dynamically switch users across Chipcom-based networks and proactively reconfigure the hub. This function is supported by network modelling and simulation capabilities that are built on a knowledge-based system. This layer features Chipcom’s ONdemand LANconnect graphical software application, developed in collaboration with NetLabs Inc following an agreement sealed last January, which manages the internetwork modules in Chipcom’s intelligent switching hubs. The Virtual Network Management is a superset of the Logical Network Management layer, providing control and monitoring across Chipcom-based virtual local area networks from multiple logical views. This capability is policy-based, providing a set of rules and recommendations for defining and controlling virtual local area networks for functions such as network optimisation and access, according to the company. A Chipcom spokesman said that the company’s strategy has been to focus on providing management capabilities only in the areas which it deems itself expert – intelligent switching hubs and local area networks – while enabling users to make their own decisions elsewhere on the network; accordingly, the new architecture, and its all future management products, will complement and integrate with other network management offerings such as Hewlett-Packard Co’s OpenView.
