Network management and control -- some history etc

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Craig Partridge <craig () aland bbn com>
Date: March 20, 2006 9:07:01 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Network management and control


Hi Dave:

A brief comment on why network management is in the space it is in.

Broadly, there are three reasons:

1. We never cleanly managed the shift from a single dominant operator  
(BBN,
    which ran the ARPANET NCC and later the Internet/Milnet NOC) to a
    set of distributed competing/cooperating entities.  At an informal
    level, there's considerable cooperation -- but putting together
    frameworks, much less protocols, that require institutional consent
    has, to date, not worked well.

2. The actual problem is hard.  Managing large distributed complex  
networks
   is difficult (even more if different people own different parts).
   That's true for data networks, cable networks, and telephony  
networks.
   Each community has its own version of horror stories -- problems  
you'd
   think should be solvable and yet defy solution at every turn.

3. Network management research has stagnated.  The Internet community
    established a very bright group of people c. 1987/8 to devise a
    network management solution for the emerging NSFNET regional  
networks.
    There were three competing proposals, two of which were widely  
recognized
    as innovative (and the third probably was too).  We picked one.   
Then
    almost all the talent walked away.  It is viewed as a moribund  
field.
    You don't get tenure for doing network management research  
(measurement
    yes, management no).  There's almost no funding.  A bunch of us
    who were there in 1987/8 got together recently to compare notes and
    were stunned to realize that the technology we use today is almost
    unchanged (both in protocols and the mindset of how to use them).

Craig
(author of one of the network management solutions that was *not* picked
in 1988 :-)).


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