AT&T Co yesterday answered IBM’s NetView network control software with an attempt to create a Network Management Protocol standard that can become part of the Open Systems Interconnection definition. Its new Unified Network Management Architecture is said to provide systems for end-to-end management and control of voice and data networks, including customer premises equipment, local […]
AT&T Co yesterday answered IBM’s NetView network control software with an attempt to create a Network Management Protocol standard that can become part of the Open Systems Interconnection definition. Its new Unified Network Management Architecture is said to provide systems for end-to-end management and control of voice and data networks, including customer premises equipment, local exchange carrier network, and AT&T in-terexchange services; enable unified networks to be built on existing systems; adhere to Open System Interconnection standards so that alien equipment can be included; and provide customers with a steady stream of new network management tools. The new architecture implements a new OSI Network Management Protocol, NMP, which AT&T says is based on ISO standards and is pushing as a standard it hopes others will adopt. It intends to publish initial NMP specifications in the next few months. The core management system is distributed across networked computers, so that management can be centralised or decentralised, and is designed to enable a building block approach to network creation. First products in the Unified Network Management Architecture are the Accumaster Consolidated Workstation and Accumaster Trouble Tracker. The workstation enables network managers to access from a single terminal AT&T’s Starkeeper Network Management System, Dataphone II System Controller and Acculink Network Manager, Accunet T1.5 Customer Controlled Reconfiguration, and IBM’s NetView. The station is based on an Olivetti 6300-series Personalike and the Starlan local net, and will be available first quarter 1988 for $7,000 to $15,000 per user. Trouble Tracker is a Unix program that runs on an AT&T 3B2 computer, and can monitor up to 400 System 75, System 85 or Dimension PABXs on a network. It oversees the performance of devices on the network by collecting alarms and issuing and tracking trouble tickets on alarms, as well as problems manually reported by users. A typical configuration is $60,000 from the second quarter of 1988.
