Web Services Based Configuration Management for IP Network Devices

Abstract

Abstract. As the Internet continues to grow, current networks are composed of a large number network devices from diverse vendors. The tasks of operating and managing these devices are getting more difficult and complicated. For that reason, IETF Netconf Working Group has an ongoing effort to standardize network configuration management. The Netconf protocol helps to exchange configuration information between a manager and agent. The protocol is able to effectively manage various devices on a network. However, it is still problematic for the manager to discover and manage configurable parameters in all the agents. A configuration task should follow a pre-defined process that is only obtained through hands-on experience. Because there is no formal methodology to describe such configuration processes, a series of configuration tasks becomes very inefficient when using the Netconf protocol only. This paper proposes a mechanism that can quickly discover devices and their parameters and easily recognize methods to manipulate the configuration information on them. We present the architecture for XCMS-WS which meets this mechanism. Web Services technologies, such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, support discovery agents and recognize agent services. Using these Web Services technologies, we have designed a more powerful and flexible system than the existing XCMS. For validation, we have applied XCMS-WS for the configuration management of NG-MON, a distributed, real-time Internet traffic monitoring and analysis system.

A NETCONF-Based Distributed Network Management Design Using Web Services and P2P

“…In Reference [7], the authors from Department of Computer Science and Engineering POSTECH give the architecture of web services based configuration management and a prototype of NETCONF manager and NETCONF agent. Reference [8] gives a P2P-based distributed network management design.…”

On Network Management Solutions and the Potential of P2P Technologies

“…Thus in this way, Web services provide a distributed management capability for monitoring the services of applications on the Internet or intranet using standard XML protocols and formats. Current researches include Web services-based configuration management [8], management performance comparison between Web services and SNMP [9], and etc.…”

Applying Semantic Web Services to Automate Network Management

“…As an example, Reference [9] has provided an XML-based Configuration Management System using Web Services (XCMS-WS). XCMS-WS consists of a manager, an agent and a private UDDI registry.…”