A collection of 15 Asynchronous Transfer Mode equipment manufacturers have formed the ATM Monitoring group, AMON, with the aim of developing an open standard for an Asychronous Mode Circuit Steering Management Information Base. The base would enable network managers to monitor upper levels – layer three and above – in order to resolve protocol problems and analyse network traffic. The new base is designed to complement the existing ones for analysis of lower levels such as the physical layer and the Transfer Mode layer. The group plans to take advantage of Asynchronous Mode’s mechanism for creating copies of virtual circuit traffic – by steering the duplicated traffic to analysis and troubleshooting equipment – and said that much existing monitoring equipment will be upgradable to support the Management Information Base. The group has already developed an outline of the ACS MIB, the Asychronous Mode Circuit Steering Management Information Base, and said that it will submit it to the ATM Forum for consideration as a standard once it has been refined. Founder members of the group include ADC Kentrox Inc, Axon Networks Inc, Cabletron Systems Inc, Cascade Communications, Fore Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Network General Corp, Northern Telecom Ltd, and StrataCom Inc. Membership is open to all, the 15 companies said.
