With the ever increasing penetration of the internet into business and personal computing networks have grown ever larger and more complex and almost impossible to manage and configure manually. As a result network configuration software has been developed to automate and manage the burden of configuring vast interrelated computer networks.
Network management software collects data about network devices through protocols (such as SNMP) that report their configuration state. These protocols can also be used to change the configuration of devices remotely. Information about the state of network devices is represented in an administrator interface in an easy to understand, often visual, representation that enables them to quickly identify and remediate any issues. These can include identifying network faults, performance degradation due to bottlenecks, device mis-configuration and compliance issues.
Some versions of network configuration software include automated functions for identifying and rectifying network issues. They also include functions for automatic configuration and provisioning of new network elements such as when devices are added or removed from the network. Maintenance functions for upgrading software and firmware are also available and ensure that changes are performed across the entire network uniformly.
Functions in some or all of the following areas are provided by network configuration software:
• Provisioning – enables new network devices to be provisioned and configured automatically resulting in significant cost savings since engineers need not be dispatched to the device’s physical location.
• Discovery – allows network devices and the relationships between them to be identified including their capabilities and administrative requirements.
• Monitoring – the network is constantly polled for the occurrence of problems and performance degradation to maintain service levels. This is achieved through network alerts and reports from network devices about their state.
• Configuration – automates the function of configuring the network and ensures configuration policies are applied across the whole network uniformly.
• Compliance – ensures that the network meets the requirements of regulatory standards and other compliance needs.
• Change Control – enables the consistent application of changes to the network and ensure s that they are performed in controlled manner. By recording all changes made, an audit trail is provided enabling the rollback of changes and providing information for unauthorized changes (such as from a network intrusion).
• Security – having visibility and control over the network as a whole and being apply to apply policies in a global way helps administrators provide security for the data maintained by networks and make intrusions easier to detect.
