An expert integrator for communication networks management

Network management is a difficult problem. How to manage the multi-vendor network efficiently and effectively has become a growing concern in the international communication networks community. OSI management has defined a basic set of facilities (functional areas) that the network management should provide. The authors propose an integrated architecture which allows the expert systems, one for each functional area, to work together in an organized way. An additional expert, namely the integrator, sits on top of the five functional experts. It passes the triggering data received from the network components to the appropriate functional experts that understand a specific network problem. In this architecture, OSI network management protocols are used as means of communications among experts. An object-oriented database and a generic user interface are presented.<>