State Model Diagrams – A Universal Runtime Network Management Tool

Abstract

Modern networks are complex systems made up of diverse devices such as routers, wireless access points, and firewalls running many interacting protocols. Networks can be managed by a range of command-line interface (CLI) tools and/or Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). While CLI tools are often preferred by network administrators, they do have some inherent disadvantages. Text based CLI outputs can be verbose. Furthermore the commands are sequential and it is therefore more difficult to navigate between different devices and protocols. GUIs assist but it can be problematic to concurrently display runtime data from multiple sources. In response to these problems State Model Diagrams (SMDs) were developed and implemented as a run-time network management tool.