An Architecture for Building Scalable, Web-BasedManagement Services

  • Authors:
  • Nikolaos Anerousis

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Network and Systems Management
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

We present the architecture of Marvel, adistributed computing environment for building scalablemanagement services using intelligent agents and theworld-wide web. Marvel is based on an information model that generates computed views of managementinformation and a distributed computing model that makesthese views available to a variety of clientapplications. Computed views consist of monitoring,control and event views of information collected fromnetwork elements and subsequently aggregated using aseries of spatial and temporal filters. Marvel does notreplace existing element management agents but rather builds on top of them a hierarchy ofservers that generate computed views and present them toclient applications in a number of formats, includingJava-enriched web pages. It uses a distributed persistent store to reduce the cost associatedwith centralized network management systems and mobileagent technology to: (a) support thin clients byuploading the necessary code to access Marvel services; and (b) extend its functionality dynamically bydownloading code that incorporates new objects andservices. A prototype implementation in Java ispresented together with results from its firstapplication on a residential broadband access system usingcable modems.