A Network Management System

The Client

The client is a Swedish network management company dedicating to the development of network device management software and offering system solutions for its customers.

Challenges

This system was developed to manage the diversified switches in the network via MIB (Management Information Base) on the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) instead of the original Telnet. These switches included Cisco devices, Nortel devices and some other switches. The detailed functions were as follows:

• Read the basic information of these switches. For instance, system description information, Mac address, port speed and duplex mode, all existing ports and VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks), and the map list of the VLAN-Port membership.
• Set the port speed and duplex mode, set the status of ports or VLAN as tagged/untagged.
• Create or remove VLANs from switch.
• Add ports to an existing tagged/untagged VLAN or remove ports from it.

Approach

The SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is an application-layer protocol designed to facilitate the exchange of management information between network devices. By using SNMP-transported data, network administrators can easily manage network performance, find and solve network problems, and plan for network growth. The MIB (Management Information Base) is a file that contains definitions of management information so that networked systems can be remotely monitored, configured, and controlled.

We developed a C# based interface to provide an integrated view of all the network elements in the system. Due to the incomplete MIB information of some switches and the lack of operating criterion for them, the development team downloaded MIB browser to access to the entire MIB and elaborately studied the structure and content of it according to the operation of the Telnet. The control of Cisco devices, Nortel devices and other switches was realized successfully in the end.

Benefits

Our senior network engineers successfully completed the development on time with a satisfactory quality of delivery, and intuitive interfaces were available, which brought convenience to customers.

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